Is use of the GPL really decreasing?
Is it reasonable to raise the question "does X still matter?" when the X in question is in use among nearly two-thirds of the target users under discussion?
What I'm referring to here is an article on the Infoworld website, with the headline: "Does GPL still matter?" The standfirst reads "As open source gets more commercial, GPL's idealism is overridden by developers' business needs."
The author has spoken to a few businessman, a lawyer, a consultant, and the chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, and drawn a number of conclusions, some of them reasonable, others which don't quite hold up.
The premise of the whole article is that use of the GPL could be - yes, that's a hypothetical - starting to slide.
The apparent basis for this thesis is a survey by a company called Black Duck Software. The article states that even though there was strong growth in GPLv3 adoption, the percentage of open source projects using GPL variants fell from 70 percent to 65 percent compared to the previous year.
There are no actual numbers provided
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
- 1316 reads
- PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
digiKam 7.7.0 is releasedAfter three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. |
Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
|
Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future TechThe metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. |
today's howtos
|
Why The GPL Matters A Little Bit Less
informationweek.com/blog: The title of an InfoWorld/Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO)! Tech piece about the GPL tells it: "Does the GPL still matter?" The answer seems to be "Yes, but ... "
The short version is something I've talked about before: usage of open source licensing is balancing out between the GPL's variants and other licenses. Now some more folks are stepping up and saying why.
rest here
GPL still matters
rajshekhar.net: GPL is a developer friendly license. The basic premise of the GPL is that the user should not subtract from the freedom he gets when redistributing software. GPL is not restrictive. It merely insists that whoever takes from the common pool must contribute back to the pool.
I would like to point to these 2 articles in support of GPL