Is the GPL Really Declining?
meshedinsights.com
Is the GPL Really Declining?
1–10 of 242 posts
Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?
#2I think it's important to separate the GPLv2 which is still vital and alive, and the GPL v3 which is now generally regarded to have been a failure.
Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?
#3I think it's important to separate the GPLv2 which is still vital and alive, and the GPL v3 which is now generally regarded to have been a failure.
I'm not sure GPL v3 is a failure, but it has created a really bad taste -- at least 3 times I've been unable to link GPL V2 and GPL v3 code. In one case I reimplemented one piece of code, in the others I went in search of a BSD library instead.
Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?
#4I think there's two split types of developers.
When I was younger, mostly hanging around on IRC servers and forums, coding just my own cool projects, I strongly believed in the GPL. All of my projects had it, and I wouldn't even dream of allowing someone to use my code without making their entire project open too.
That's the first type I think. The second type is the more HN-style professional programmer.
Now as I've grown up a little and interacted a lot more with the programming community, I've realised that the GPL licence just causes more pain and frustration to developers. If I want my source code under Apache-2.0, why should I have to change it to GPL just for you.
I want anyone to be able to do whatever they want to with my code. That includes developers wanting to create a proprietary application. Telling them they can't is not freedom.
I feel we've lost ourselves in the freedom of users and forgotten about the people that make the applications for the users.
---
Edit: As a small P.S. to this, I think the middle ground is using the GPL for actual end-user applications, but leaving libraries and developer tools completely open with something like Apache-2.0 or MIT.
Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?
#5I think it's important to separate the GPLv2 which is still vital and alive, and the GPL v3 which is now generally regarded to have been a failure.
I am a huge supporter of GPLv3 and license most of my open source work with it. Still, the Linux kernel has been famously v2, and macos has removed as much v3 work as possible (to the point of using very outdated versions of many packages including bash).
Things like CLang/LLVM, and don't get me wrong, they're technologically amazing, still have a huge focus of not being in the GPL world.
Back in the early 2000s, the hardcore FSF people dreamed of a work with OSS replacements for Photoshop and every other major tool people felt they needed in the closed Win/Mac world. That never really happened:
http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-...
Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?
#6> The use and support of the GPL has grown with it, but new strengths have also emerged related to corporate adoption of open source, leading to stronger growth of associated approaches to licensing.
TL;DR: Although we're trying to hide it in hundreds of lines of weaseling and CorpSpeak, yes, it's dying.
Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?
#7I think it's important to separate the GPLv2 which is still vital and alive, and the GPL v3 which is now generally regarded to have been a failure.
GPL 3 was about naking abuse and exploitation of GPL 2 harder. Seeing it as a failure shows our industry in a very sad light.
This might ve a bit melodramatic way to state it, but GPL 3 failing means evil thriumphing.
Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?
#8I think there's two split types of developers. When I was younger, mostly hanging around on IRC servers and forums, coding just my own cool projects, I strongly believed in the GPL. All of my projects had it, and I wouldn't even dream of allowing someone to use my code without making their entire project open too. That's the first type I think. The second type is the more HN-style professional programmer. Now as I've…
Very much this. If you make an open source library, and you don't intend to ever charge for it, then at least allow people to use it in their products, free or commercial, without having to open source the entire thing.
Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?
#9I think there's two split types of developers. When I was younger, mostly hanging around on IRC servers and forums, coding just my own cool projects, I strongly believed in the GPL. All of my projects had it, and I wouldn't even dream of allowing someone to use my code without making their entire project open too. That's the first type I think. The second type is the more HN-style professional programmer. Now as I've…
A lof of us made this transformation. I vividly defended the GPL when I started doing open source work. I remember being told by others to use the GPL and became and advocate for it.
Slowly but surely I noticed that the licenses became the main point of contagion and I did not actually care about the letter of the license anyways. I wanted people to use it and not have to worry about it. I know I'm not alone.
Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?
#10I think it's important to separate the GPLv2 which is still vital and alive, and the GPL v3 which is now generally regarded to have been a failure.
I find this schism very interesting. You have a lot of people now harming the GPLv2 communities by being nice. For instance there is a noticeable push for projects to go Apache which is GPLv2 incompatible.
OpenSSL is famously GPL incompatible but now it's only GPLv2 incompatible. Likewise all GPLv3 code is GPLv2 incompatible so you effectively have two worlds that both have similar goals but cannot share code work together. This is particularly striking in the Linux environment where the kernel is v2 licensed and the user land pushes really hard on GPLv3.