Is the GPL Really Declining?

Literally every company you mentioned contributes code to FreeBSD, so what are you even talking about[1][2][3]?

[1]: https://freshbsd.org/search?project=freebsd&q=netapp

[2]: https://freshbsd.org/search?project=freebsd&q=emc

[3]: https://freshbsd.org/search?project=freebsd&q=iXsystems

no.

> Or the number of lines of code under the license?

no.

> Or the number of committers collectively working on projects under that license? Or the number of published articles advocating for it?

sorry, no and no.

If I sold cars, and you asked me how popular my car is, the only metric would be, how many did I sell (not how big is it, or how many people it took to build, or how many articles were published about it). This is not a hard question. You can count projects on github and elsewhere and what licenses they are using and that's your answer.

the GPL is declining for reasons the author points out, that GPL doesn't work for libraries and frameworks: "For developers mixing ingredients from multiple origins – frameworks, components, libraries – reciprocal license requirements increase the uncertainty rather than decrease it."

What he fails to quote a statistic for (and I'd be curious to see) would be what percentage of open source projects are fully realized applications (like LibreOffice) vs. libraries/ frameworks (like the enormous number of libraries for Python, Javascript, Ruby, Go), and how has that number been changing over the years.

Years ago I was planning to release SQLAlchemy on the LGPL and I was quickly talked out of it, reminded that the langauge of the LGPL is archaically focused on C-centric concepts like linkers and that it scares the crap out of legal departments. I haven't looked since but it seems like Gnu hasn't improved upon that situation. The author refers to open source as " the “safe space” in which developers with an interest in a piece of software, for whatever reason, are able to collaborate over its evolution without the motivations of others impacting their own usage." - for me and probably most other people, that's a BSD-like license, so that all your collaborators who are after all using your software to produce something in-house at their place of employment, can freely use and contribute to your software without them being hindered by their company legal departments.

I look on the GPL somewhat differently. I look at it as a means of payment to the community (and to myself by extension for my own work).

I want to be paid for my code and the things I create. But I also want to give back to the community. The GPL allows me both. You may ask, though, what kind of money can I get if I give the code away?

I don't want money.

I want code.

Code for code. That's what I want as payment. I want the code so I can learn from it. So I can make my code better. So I can make the thing I made better, and so I can give that better thing out to others, so they can make their things better.

I could make my code proprietary and "closed" - but that doesn't mean I'll get any payment for it. In fact, it might be copied and pirated. Proprietary code also doesn't allow me to share the code.

Releasing it BSD-style allows me to share the code, but I still might not get any payment for it. Honestly, I don't want the money - I don't need the money.

But code? I can always use more code. I can always learn from other's code. Code is very valuable to me.

Another thing - I know that if I die, or if I stop giving away my code for some reason (by choice or not) - my code can live on, and continue paying back to others in code. I don't have to worry that someone out there won't be able to use the code or run the code because the hardware has changed so much (they might have to recompile, or perhaps rewrite some of it - but they have the code to do so), or if it has a bug, they can fix it with the code.

I look at the GPL as a means of paying for code, and getting paid for code - by being paid in code.

Freedoms to alter and redistribute... These are powerful things and very different from commercial considerations or "how much hassle it causes a developer". If you're coming at things from that point of view, GPL will rarely seem a good fit.

Now. But what about tomorrow?

Neither you nor I can know what tomorrow will bring. But should it revert back to the old status-quo, what then? What if these self-same companies take all of the nice BSD/MIT/non-GPL'd code, package it up, make it better - so much so that people prefer it over the original! - and sell it, and make a mint off it, and it becomes much more popular.

They continue to extend it, but never give anything back to the original authors, and perhaps the original project dies from lack of use by people, and faltering participation of developers because no one is using it.

So now - wonderful open source software goes from being open - to closed and proprietary. The users don't care - they are getting great value for their money, right? But the software, which was once open and useful for the developers, is virtually gone.

Don't think it could ever change back to this? Don't be a fool. Maybe not in 5 years, or 10 - or maybe it will!

History does repeat - or at least echoes loud and clearly. Being prepared for such a possibility is better, in my perspective, than assuming the way things are today is the way they'll always be going forward.