GPL, Copyleft Use Declining Fast 808
itwbennett writes "Use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL set of licenses is declining at an accelerating rate, according to new analysis by the 451 Group's Matthew Aslett. In fact, the 451 Group projects that GPL usage will hit 50% by September 2012. Instead, developers are licensing projects under permissive licenses such as the MIT, Apache (ASL), BSD, and Ms-PL. The shift started in 2007 and has been gathering momentum ever since. Blogger Brian Proffitt posits that 'the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL."
BSD license was always more permissive, so great (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why anyone would not want to use the GPL if they want their software to be free and open. Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back? Maybe these developers are hoping to get bought out by a large company someday?
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
Because if you truly want to promote freedom and free code, you also have to let people to profit from it. Freedom isn't picking who gets to enjoy that "freedom" based on some rules.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more like having freedom of speech, but anyone who feels like it can revoke it. GPL doesn't restrict freedom, it enforces freedom.
Yeah, except a company which decides to use and modify open source software without giving back does not revoke anyone else' right to the code... so, in other words, it's not like that at all.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
What is "profit from" also? If I borrow some internationalization code as part of a huge project, this saves the company money from having to buy a propriety product perhaps. More likely though it means we don't implement it ourselves and have less bugs down the road than if we rolled our own. Now does that mean we profited and the original author now gets access to every single line of our code as the GPL would imply? Even if the code is proprietary and our competitors are anxious to get a peek at it? Even if various government agencies disallow giving away the code or allowing end user customization of the machines?
With GPL the return payment is that you must also be GPL in absolutely everything you do. With BSD the return payment is that you give recognition to the author and keep the copyright notices intact. The first type of payment is too high for most companies unless they've got a software model that fits (ie, dynamic libraries, separately loaded programs, kernel modules, multiple cpus). The second payment is much easier but many companies don't know of it and they associate all free or open source software as GPL tainted. So the result is many smaller companies reinvent small pieces of code or libraries all the time, not the result desired if the author wanted to share code.
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Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the purpose of the GPL is to ensure that those that profit from your work also give back.
Its purpose is economic warfare [gnu.org] against all non-copyleft software, with the ultimate goal of world domination [kde.org] (eliminating non-free software).
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No, that's RMS goal. I personally like the gpl and have nothing against proprietary software, if it delivers enough value, it will always be there. Integration, vertical markets, efficient algorithms, and so on.
Proprietary stuff must have alternatives or we get back to the best win/office days. Bloated stuff, incompatibilities, forced obsolescence... that's what free software saved you from, even if you don't use it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the purpose of the GPL is to ensure that those that profit from your work also give back. Everyone needs to be paid, some of us just want to be paid in code. For that reason I use GPL, but BSD, MIT, Apache are all good, free, licenses, so I really don't see an issue here.
No, that's the purpose of OSI and Eric Raymond's group (used to be his, but he no longer runs it - has moved on to other things, unlike RMS). Those people are about the things you describe. People who are interested in open source due to practical agreements about the best development models ought to support the OSI. Those people are the ones working w/ companies to make the case of how open source can work for them.
But the FSF and the GPL is all purely about Stallman's ego, as Hairyfeet pointed out a
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Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a good example of this. I've been using Cryptoheaven [cryptoheaven.com] as my email provider for several years. They open source their client, but not their server side code. This means you cannot actually use the code without also using them, and I've been locked to paying them because I was stupid enough to use their domains for emails while registering to all kinds of services.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but your post does not make any sense. If Google decide to use GPL code then that is fine. If they improve it internally but do not give it back then they can do that but they will either have to permanently fork it and lose any improvements to the GPL version or they will have to continually patch their modifications back against the GPL source tree. Even then they don't 'own' their code which can have legal ramifications down the road, for example if they decide to release a version in Android. The fact you think it locks users into their services is clueless, do you know anything at all about software?
Your example is incredibly poor. Open sourcing the client makes sense as then it can be ported to different platforms. They may not open source the server side code but the data is encrypted using standard RSA asymmetric and AES symmetric algorithms. As they keys will be stored client side you have all you need to prevent lock-in of your data. If you register for services using an email address then, er, yes, those services will expect you to have that email address. If you wish to change then simply create a new email address, and log into each service and change the registered email address. But you are obviously too lazy to do this.
Phillip.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Insightful)
they will have to continually patch their modifications back against the GPL source tree.
The same situation as in the common case when they do release their patches, but King Chief Committer does not consider your puny code worthy of notice and refuses to merge in your filthy changes in the pristine head branch, which is only for King Chief Committer and his inner cicrle of nerds.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Informative)
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more like a total crock of shit.
It's the old percentages game people. When GPL came out there was bugger all open source software and as GPL become more popular closed source proprietary software companies started launching various kinds of open source public relations licences.
Low and behold there are now a whole bunch of other types of open source licences and with proprietary closed source software companies companies playing silly buggers with public relations, breaking down programmes into modules and open sourcing the modules to ramp up the numbers, just so they can crap on about how good they are at sharing.
Just another lame arsed pathetic attack piece. Of course when you want to charge thousands of dollars for a report https://store.the451group.com/index.php?cPath=3&osCsid=gttqeg90f1go39789fobdf4nf2 [the451group.com], you have to be pretty inflammatory to pull the mugs in.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Insightful)
it enforces freedom
You're gonna be free wether you like it or not!
The freedoms are rivalrous -- you're free to distribute a piece of software however you please, or you're free to extend a piece of software however you please. The first one is a commerce right, the second one is a moral right. Both of these can't always be satisfied.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Informative)
What? How come every single time GPL comes up everyone automatically assumes that there is a clause that forbids you to profit from GPL-ed projects? I personally modified quite a number of GPL software and, sticking to the license provided the source code along with the binaries AND received a payment.
Tell RedHat that you cannot profit from GPL software.
And to repeat once again — BSD is about freedom of the coder, GPL is about freedom of the code.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
BSD is about the freedom to make choices for everyone in the distribution chain.
And what I just remarked is what is wrong with BSD... from a GPL POV. Keeping everyone else in the distribution chain able to make their own choices (except restricting anybody else) is, for GPL advocates, more important than you losing the ability to forbid everyone to do anything with the code you "inherited".
GPL is about imposing restrictions ON THE USE OF THE CODE for everyone in the distribution chain.
And that is false. There is one restriction on distribution, and none on use. You don't use software when you distribute it. Please remember that.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
The freedom the GPL guarantees is the customer's freedom.
It means if you use something you also get to see what it is and to be able to modify it.
Programmers are not an ends in themselves.
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You're gonna be free wether you like it or not!
This would be a great view of things if you could just compare BSD/MIT to GPL. Unfortunately, you have to take into account that there's also copyright and other laws which do also impose a "whether you like it or not!" situation that many people -in particular those having to deal with software development- end up very much not liking.
The GPL licenses are trying to work around various un-sane defaults in copyright. And the BSD/MIT licenses are really only deferral of all rights to the next party, which the
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Can I have this in the form of a car analogy please?
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Informative)
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You had me at "truck nuts".
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to disagree but it forces not enforces. MIT and BSD licenses are completely free and require nothing of someone using or contributing. GPL requires that anything one creates using GPL code must be open as well. I prefer GPL. There is nothing more annoying then say a company that makes an OS which uses an MIT licensed graphics library or a BSD licensed network stack but at the same time fights aggressively against free and open source software.
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Since when does Apple fight aggressively against Open Source? They have spent billions writing open source applications and distributing them. They run one of the largest open source repositories (MacPorts)...
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There is nothing more annoying then say a company that makes an OS which uses an MIT licensed graphics library or a BSD licensed network stack but at the same time fights aggressively against free and open source software.
Apple?
Well, maybe, except that
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The claim of BSD users is that it results in a situation that is more free. In other words it is being taken as a given that freedom for people downstream from the developers is an intrinsic good. If freedom is not an intrinsic good the whole anti-GPL argument made by the BSD camp, that the GPL reduces freedom, falls flat. Reducing freedom is no longer a bad thing.
So given that axiomatically freedom is an intrinsic good lets look at the X situation. At the time of the open systems movements there were
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Red Hat seems to have no problem profiting while selling mostly-GPL'ed code...
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Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is using immense amounts of GPL software. Their data centers runs linux. Their own version of it, not shared back. Search, ads, everything Google runs is based on GPL-ed software. They can get away with it because they do not distribute their software, as technically they use it in-house, even though the results of the GPL software is what brings in the dough. They've found a giant loophole (the web) where you do not need to distribute actual software to let (a) people use it, and (b) profit from it.
So yes, the OP was right, and has an excessive flamebait mod: Google is one of the biggest abusers of GPL. Legally, they are 100% in the clear. Morally, less so.
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This stuff ab
Re:Don't be stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
First, your statement that "they are getting around the GPL requirements" is factually false. There is no "law" requiring anyone to be a mind reader, and somehow divine "intent" - and in the case of licenses such as the GPL (and other "contracts of adhesion"), any and all "grey areas" are to be interpreted strictly to the benefit of the recipient, and set up against the grantor.
Second, the GPL clearly states that it's okay to profit from GPL'd code - and makes NO additional restrictions about it when you
Re:Don't be stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Just look at Apple - the company with the most worth in the whole world - selling software that was built upon FreeBSD.
And not contributing anything back to the community. Should Apple fall one day or just discontinue its BSD-based products, all their achievements will be lost. On the other hand, when a big GPL vendor falls or discontinues a product, anybody can come in and keep it alive from the last public release.
Re:Don't be stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Quite the contrary - here's the source [apple.com]. And keep in mind that apple also hired some of the FreeBSD developers, and contributed back to the FreeBSD project with code.
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"exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis" (lit. "the exception confirms [approves, demonstrates] the rule in cases not excepted"). His usage here seems perfectly valid, so I'm a bit confused by what you mean. Red Hat has to go through special means to profit through releasing GPL'd code. Implying there is a rule that companies cannot do so through normal means. Which is exactly what the phrase was coined to mean.
Also implying that companies that do not want to go through such exceptions should use t
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That's not what it actually means at all. [wikipedia.org]
The fact that people defending the commercial viability of GPL'd software always trot out the same tiny number of examples is incredibly telling.
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So tell me, o mighty spouter of clichés, what the fuck your statement has it to do with the question at hand?
If you can't immediately see the answer to that question, then you could always look up the old legal concept properly and educate yourself. Here, let me Google that for you [lmgtfy.com]. Perhaps next time, you'll have the courtesy to do so before you resort to knee-jerk ad hominem attacks.
The point of the original legal idea was that if you start enumerating specific counter-examples then you are creating a presumption that the general case holds. In this context, while obviously we're talking about economics rather th
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No it doesn't, any more than the rules of soccer apply to tennis.
In legal usage - the only correct one - the meaning boils down to "why did they write it, then?". So if a law states that you may drive the wrong way down a one-way street if it's blocked, and you do cautiously yada yada yada, that implies that there is a law stating that you may not drive the wrong way down a one way street; if ther
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Informative)
I can profit while using GPL code. I simply can't take and not give back.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with that claim is that it's not even remotely true. For example, consider Google. They have their own private fork of Linux (GPLv2) which includes things like their own filesystem. Some changes are contributed back to the community because maintaining them in a private fork costs more than the loss of competitive advantage from sharing them. Some are kept private, because the scales tip the other way.
In contrast, Yahoo uses a private fork of FreeBSD on a lot of their systems. They employ several FreeBSD developers and contribute a lot of changes back if doing so won't give away a serious competitive advantage, but they keep some things private.
One project has a permissive license, the other has a strong copyleft license, but the behaviour of downstream users is identical in both cases. The GPL doesn't stop you using, modifying, or profiting from the code without giving anything back, it only prevents you from refusing to share the source for your modifications with anyone who receives a binary.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Interesting)
And even that is not wholly correct. Perhaps this works best:
I can profit while using GPL software. I simply cannot close the source code as a means of forcing my customers into a dependency on me. Which is why the GPL was created in the first place.
could totally do it (Score:4, Informative)
If you encapsulate all your AI code in a standalone binary and don't directly link against the GPL'd stuff, then all you need to make public are the changes you made to the GPL'd stuff. Your proprietary binary can be kept proprietary as long as you can make a case that it is not a derivative work of the GPL'd stuff.
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I'm not sure if the simplicity isn't illusory. The problem is that lawyers are pedants. I mean look at the 3-clause BSD license:
Copyright (c) [year], [copyright holder]
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of the [organization] nor the
names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
[AS IS no warranties block]
It certainly looks fairly simple.
But let's think about the third clause there: You can't use the name of the copyright holder to endorse or promote products derived from it. Now normally you have a first amendment right to make statements of fact. But let's say I go ahead and use OpenSSH in my software, which is BSD licensed, and then somebody in an internet discussion questions th
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Informative)
The Island of Sark was, until fairly recently, the only remaining feudal state in Europe. Not that long ago they did have an actual referendum and decided to stay like that, rather than transitioning to democracy (some time later they had another referendum and decided to make the change after all).
Its a tiny, tiny place - cars are illegal, you use bicycle or cart - so I imagine there genuinely *is* an argument that you know the people in power personally, so why would you need elections. Presumably the first time round they just couldn't see the benefit of democracy in their particular case. Not the same scale as, say, Egypt but it is a valid case of where there were sane arguments against democracy.
Tangent: when they did switch, the democracy was apparently under immediate attack. Some UK newpaper barons from neighbouring island (the Barclay Brothers, who own the Telegraph newspaper) threw their weight behind the democracy campaign and put up a candidate. They have subsequently been accused of using their muscle as a local employer to punish and manipulate the population (who voted for someone other than the Brothers' preferred candidate). A thoroughly surreal situation and bizarre to think of a state the size of a very small town / large village immediately under attack by commercial interests and pressures!
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What about the freedom to profit? It is a right for people to want to make money and why is that bad? Student loans, kids, retirement, and a car are considered basic rights and responsibilities. Aint got no money? Then you cant have any of it? Cry all you want but the grocery store doesnt care that you do great things for humanity when your kids are hungry. They just want your money.
So your rights if you own the code are important too. Thats life
Yes I advocate the BSD license.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Informative)
GPL doesn't prevent profit. It just forces people to "pay forward" to their users the same favor they received from upstream.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll give you that, but it is just as much a right to want to sleep with supermodels. However, don't confuse the right to want to with the right to have.
Those are basic responsibilities, but you don't have a basic right to them.
Okay, about the code itself. If you are the original developer and sole copyright holder, you aren't restricted by the license. The GPL could possibly be a greater way of making money because you can sell exceptions, and competitors can't distribute a proprietary version based upon the work you've done. If you licensed that same project under the BSDL, your competitors could make a proprietary version. They could keep using your beneficial changes, but you wouldn't have access to theirs. I don't see how that's beneficial to the original developer. I see how it's beneficial to the competitor that builds a proprietary version upon yours, but I don't see why we should be working to benefit those parties.
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I didn't say those weren't responsibilities. I claimed there's no such thing as a right to a car. Those are things you can get, but aren't inherently entitled to have them. Also, I don't think that people who don't have children, cars, or student loans are irresponsib
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
gpl first freedom (0):
"the freedom to use the software for any purpose"
"we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can."
from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
The cost of distributing someone else's gpl work is licensing your derivative work under the same license. The face up fairness of this deal is what appeals to so many developers. Every license has rules.
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Heh, but I don't want to, which is why I write GPL3 code.
The GPL lets me ensure payment in some form. Either I get source, or I can possibly get money in exchange for a different license.
If you're not happy with that, then of course I don't get anything, but since there's nothing in it for me if I let you use my code without benefitting from it, it doesn't really make a difference.
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For personal use, not everyone is in it for the money. <shrug>
And as far as the political aspects, to most companies GPL == toxic, and they don't care about the details.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Informative)
In my previous job I had customers who were deathly afraid of GPL to the point where they would not allow me as their supplier to use any open source code in the products I supplied regardless of what the license was or if it saved money.
For these people anyway GPL was a real impediment to the acceptance of open source.
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Yes, I've heard similar stories many times in recent years. You see small companies that don't want anything to do with it because they're afraid of risks they don't fully understand. And you see large companies that don't want anything to do with it because their legal departments are well aware of the risks and issue company-wide bans, and you don't argue with company-wide bans from Legal.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
to most companies GPL == toxic
In my experience, it's a little bit more complex than that. To most companies, the GPL is complicated. They can almost certainly use GPL'd code without violating the license, but their lawyers aren't 100% certain. Their lawyers are certain that they can use BSD licensed code without violating the license. Their lawyers are also certain that they can use proprietary code without violating the license, because they get a license that explicitly permits them to do what they want.
I've seen several cases of the GPL driving companies to buy proprietary solutions: given the choice between buying a proprietary license and using free GPL'd code, they'll pick the proprietary solution and limit their (perceived) liability. If there's a BSD licensed alternative, they'll use that and quite often contribute changes back (after all, it's usually cheaper than maintaining a private fork).
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's odd that they consider EULAs to be simple and the GPL to be complicated.
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Some developers are very happy to have their work included in something and used widely. BSD makes companies include an acknowledgement of the use of your work, so you can know you made that project happen. Presumably, if a lot of money is being made by some company that includes your free software, you've helped build something cool that people want. I think a lot of developers see GPL as a "taking my toys and going home" license which discourages free use. If you weren't going to make a million dollar ide
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I think the shift has occurred because of increasing corporate interest in open source. BSD is seen as more corporate-friendly than GPL, when in fact it should be the other way around--BSD allows your competitors to reap the fruit of your labor without giving you anything in return. Start-ups, however, are lured by the idea of being able to close-source everything once their product becomes a smash hit, while established companies face genuine legal issues preventing them from linking GPL'ed code with closed-source code from vendors.
So, start-ups really need to ditch the bait-and-switch fantasy that's driving them towards the BSD. Back in the real world, most such start-ups will fail long before they ever create a popular enough product to pull this trick, and it will partially be due to the fact that they brilliantly gave away all their work to their closed-source competitors for absolutely nothing in return.
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Which is more giving... (Score:3)
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
If you love something, let it go free.
If it does not return to you, it was never yours...
If I am truly being charitable, why NOT let someone profit from something I have made? I would like them to return something if possible but why would I wish to place that burden as a legal demand instead of a request that they can choose to honor?
A lot of times you create something for others
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As the maintainer of Net-SNMP [net-snmp.org] I've received a huge number of patches that would never have been given to us if Net-SNMP used a GPL license (though in this case, the code predates the GPL). Companies that have worked on the Net-SNMP code and have given back to it do so because they want to use their cool new feature they've developed for the code base in their proprietary software or hardware. IE, the Net-SNMP libraries and applications are the base upon which they build. It's important to them to contrib
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GPL caused too many problems for companies
[citation needed]
What are these problems? What companies are saying "we won't go for GPL again because of problems in the past"? Does this actually have a significant impact on GPL usage?
It is easy to assume that companies wouldn't be happy with the GPL because it restricts what they can do, but that doesn't mean that this is actually how it works out in practice.
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I have yet to see any evidence that GPL creates more benefit for society than any other FOSS licence. Can you provide anything?
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the fact that all these new, fancy mobile devices running Android have kernel sources available. I'm sure if it were BSD we wouldn't see anything, and hacking them to do as we wish would be considerably more difficult.
Of course, this is my opinion and you are free to reject it as "invalid" if you see fit.
BSD greatly benefited society. (Score:5, Insightful)
everything has pros and cons, we can have something good for "economics" but bad for society as a whole
That is what happens with GPL and BSD
False. BSD has been incredibly good for society. UC Berkeley's sharing of their implementation of Unix is the very origin of the FOSS movement. BSD is where many original Linux developers learned how to do their thing. And where many Linux developers, to this day, find some pretty useful code.
Society generally benefits from the more open and more flexible approaches. Society usually does not benefit as much from the "this is the one and only true path" approach of the zealot.
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BSD has been incredibly good for society.
BSD, as in Berkeley Standard Distribution, sure. The BSD license?
What harm do you imagine would have come if the GPL had existed when BSD first started and they had used it instead of the BSD license?
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the only way to make money is to take open source software and ensure that the recipients of your modified version cannot have the source code? Or that the source code must absolutely be integrated deeply into yours?
I know, those pesky anti-DRM requirements sure make it hard to squeeze your users for money.
GPLv3 threw out the baby with the bathwater... (Score:2, Insightful)
When companies realized that if they ship GPL v3 code in any way, shape, or form, a customer could demand any trade secrets from them, the legal bean counters went nuts.
An example would be a machine that skins oranges. Any GPL v3 code used in the machine would force the maker to hand over to customers on request the CAD blueprints for the mechanisms, the timing involved, down to the color of the engineer farts when the thing is put together.
I personally have seen companies who had to re-engineer a whole em
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Too bad for them, since most of Linux isn't GPL v3. The kernel certainly isn't and huge portions of userspace aren't either... ESPECIALLY in the embedded space, where people use slimmer versions of things like libc.
Re:GPLv3 threw out the baby with the bathwater... (Score:4, Informative)
FUD with modpoints is still FUD. If the user can replace the software you're green, now go troll somewhere else.
Re:GPLv3 threw out the baby with the bathwater... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you needed more competent lawyers then. Linux itself is GPLv2 only, and unlikely to ever change (unless you can simultaneously convince several thousand copyright holders). And any part of userspace that is GPLv3 can easily be replaced with BSD or even proprietary counterparts if you really wanted to.
If you're going to make a statement like "Any GPL v3 code used in the machine would force the maker to hand over to customers on request the CAD blueprints for the mechanisms, the timing involved, down to the color of the engineer farts when the thing is put together," you need to give us evidence. I've read the GPLv3 and I can't think of any clause that would support your statement. I am curious to know what parts fo the GPLv3 you are referring to.
On the other hand, the company stood to benefit from someone else's work without any monetary payment. Now they are paying for what they are using (Windows CE). In some ways the situation with Windows CE is now much more honest. Instead of trying to use linux and get away with it without complying with the license, they are now paying Microsoft for each and every unit shipped (essentially).
Hearing stories like this makes me very grateful that Torvalds had the foresight to use the GPL. Things aren't all well (tivoization), but they could be much much worse. I firmly believe that Linux is what it is because of the GPL. If not for the GPL IBM would never have invested so heavily in it. The GPL ensures that IBM's contributions cannot be used against it, while at the same time mutually benefiting the whole project. Apple chose a different way by blending parts of the BSD kernel with Mach. Has that helped BSD much? Only in exposure. I don't know of any Apple subsystems that have made their way back into BSD.
Re:Bull! (Score:5, Informative)
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Referring to operating systems by the userspace software they use is ridiculous.
And referring to them by a subset of the userspace software.... (Admittedly, the C library is a very significant part of the userspace software, and it is from the GNU project on most Linux distributions, albeit not the one with the green robot as I understand it.
So "Linux", in the sense of "a Linux distribution", is not under any single license:
Fine with me, GPLv3 sucks for business (Score:2, Interesting)
the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL.
I'm in business to make money. I also love OSS and have spent literally hundreds of hours personally contributing back in many different ways. The problem with GPLv3 is that I can't use it in an application I develop unless I release any changes/mods I make to the source code.
That's my secret sauce. If I'm a startup and trying to form a niche in an industry, why would I want to give my recipe away?
Re:Fine with me, GPLv3 sucks for business (Score:5, Informative)
That was true with the GPLv2 as well.
Boo hoo, so write it yourself. Why is it every complaint against the GPL seems to come from those who want to mooch and not contribute?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Proof? Any?
Re:Fine with me, GPLv3 sucks for business (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that. The reason GPL is problematic is that it's all too easy to copy and paste a couple of lines of code out of some open source project into something you're working on. If it's under a BSD license, no problem. If it's under a GPL license, you're screwed. For this reason, the safest default policy for big corporations is to deny all use of GPLed software to remove the temptation.
The result of this is that folks working for those companies are less likely to spend time working on GPLed projects. More importantly, because those companies are not bringing in GPLed source from the outside, they are no longer forced to use that license for their own code. The net effect is that less GPLed code gets produced.
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Boo hoo, so write it yourself.
Precisely. "The problem with GPLv3 is that I can't use it in an application I develop unless I release any changes/mods I make to the source code." - which presumably means "The problem with code licensed under the GPLv3 or v2 is..." - really means "the problem with code licensed under the GPLv3 or v2 is that I can't control it the way I want rather than the way the person who wrote the code wants."
That's only a "problem with the GPL" in that the GPL exists, meaning it's avai
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Visual Flash (Score:3, Funny)
What projects are they measuring? (Score:2)
From the article, it isn't clear to me what criteria they used to include projects in their survey. It would be interesting to know the numbers based on impact of the project -- a zillion little drivers released under BSD could skew the results.
Wasn't GPL *intended* to be transitionary? (Score:3)
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm sure you will), but wasn't the point of the GPL to enforce the rules of open-source while it was still emerging? The idea was that open-source projects would be more vulnerable when the open-source movement was new, and it would be more likely that some company would take BSD-licensed code and not just release it as their own, but be able to effectively relegate the open-source one to a small niche of irrelevancy. Now that pretty much every company takes open source seriously, it's not as necessary - if someone were to take Firefox, tweak the branding, and release it as their own commercial product, they wouldn't be able to take all the marketshare Firefox has simply by virtue of being a "real" company, not "a bunch of open-source basement-dwelling commie nerds".
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How is this licence scored? (Score:3)
One of my projects was released under the WTFPL: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/ [zoy.org]
I'm not exactly sure what this entails other than it releases me from liability if someone else uses it. There are so many hobbyist level projects these days that someone is probably replicating your project's purpose under a different codebase it doesn't really matter what you licence it under - you're lucky to get 2-3 people using your project's code. My other project got released under "the Berkeley licence" simply because my father went to school there years ago, and it was relatively short. Maybe I should make a "free licence roulette" website to help other hobbyist projects pick random licences.
TL;DR most hobbyist developers only include a licence as a formality
Bad statistics (Score:4, Informative)
The statistic shows percenage of actual project count, and doesn't anyhow respect the overall usage or size ("importance/weight") of the software.
I'm therefore afraid that the plot is biased by a large amount of tiny projects that are used by 10 people and choose some cc-by-sa alternative because it's simple enough and often a "default" choice.
MS-PL (Score:5, Interesting)
I see that the Microsoft Public License is grouped in with the other permissive ones like Apache and BSD. Honest question though, is the MS-PL actually a popular choice for non-Microsoft projects? I've never really seen it much, and my intuition says that a decent set of open source devs would be allergic to a Microsoft license.
Its About the Projects Changing (Score:5, Informative)
Economy (Score:3)
Look ma I know statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to invalidate the outcome of the report (though the hyperbole could do with some work) but this arbitrary 'percentage' assignment has me wondering. Could this not just reflect a new growth in say Rails projects or Javascript (the Ruby community is traditionally MIT/BSD, see too very common frameworks like jQuery). In the past code like this was rarely included, but this might just represent the true makeup of the community and fast LOC growth in one community doesn't mean the other community is jumping ship to a different license.
My hypothesis (Score:3)
Just an off-the-cuff thought, but maybe we could categorise GPL as "want to be paid" and BSD/MIT as "already been paid". With the former, it tends to be coders writing pet projects in their spare time. They want to contribute to the world but resent being exploited for free. Hence the GPL means they will be paid in code or if corporate they need to pay cash for a commercial license. With BSD/MIT the work has been funded by academia/corporations hence has already been paid for, meaning less barrier to releasing it into the wild even if plagiarized for no return. The growing percentage of corporate contributions will of course be reflected in the percentage change in licensing terms.
Phillip.
Brian Proffitt again? (Score:4, Informative)
Blogger Brian Proffitt
A person well known for anti-open-source propaganda and nothing else.
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What does it force? The only new things in the GPLv3, at least that I recall, was a bar on using it in systems that locked the system down and prevented the user from installing custom built versions of the GPL software.
Re:It stopped being about the software (Score:4, Insightful)
Which strikes an anti DMCA nerve with Big Content folks who don't want to lose the leash they have their users bound by.
Telling a commercial company to use the GPL is like telling an alcoholic to lob a nuke at the brewery.
Companies LOVE screwing their users over, and giving that up is too hard.
Re:Awareness (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea about GPL is great - make sure code stays open.
To me it's more a matter of "Make sure people don't go lifting my code and using it for their own commercial benefit (read: profit) without giving something back.". They can give back by making their own contributions to the code available to everyone on the same terms my code was made available to them under, or they can give back by coming to me and paying money for a regular commercial license to the code. But if they expect to get my code for free, no strings attached? Well, they aren't giving their product away for free, no strings attached, are they?
Example are the BSD unices that complain how they cannot use GPL'd drivers and other code, whereas the 'linux/gnu team' can happily borrow code from them. That's up to the very GPL license to fix.
Why should the GPL fix anything here? It's not the GPL side that has the problem. And I'd argue that it's not the BSD side that has the problem either. After all, they're the ones who decided on a license that allows this situation. They're the ones who consider that license better than the GPL. And now they're complaining that their license does exactly what they wanted it to do? If they didn't want that happening, they shouldn't've used a license whose intent was to allow exactly that to happen.
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Personally, i wish the next GPL license would be more open, in the sense of: you can protect this very piece of code, but remove the 'viral' part from it, and allow usage in any further license. Example are the BSD unices that complain how they cannot use GPL'd drivers and other code, whereas the 'linux/gnu team' can happily borrow code from them. That's up to the very GPL license to fix. Same applies to closed source - i bet a company would happily show code of a GPL library they used, and possibly modified, if it was only limited to that.
What you describe is pretty much the same thing as LGPL or the license of the C++ standard lib that comes with gcc. It is a GPL license with exception clause to avoid GPL contamination because of template and header inclusion.