GPL, copyleft use declining faster than ever

http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/233753/gpl-copyleft-use-declining-faster-ever

by mkup • 14 years ago

61 108 14 years ago

jsavimbi• 14 years ago

This happens because people don't understand the GPL and its unique ability to empower developers to write software or something really interdesting like that.

4ad• 14 years ago

People understand GPL just fine. The described trend is caused by consciously rejecting GPLs ideals, not because of ignorance.

mjn2• 14 years ago

In academia my impression is that the decline of the GPL is due to business models more than ideals. There was a period of popularity in the 1990s and 2000s where dual-licensing GPL/commercial was used as an attempt to both open-source the code while still making money from commercial users who would pay for a non-GPL license. The copyleftness in that strategy wasn't really about agreeing with RMS, but about making sure you'd get paid if the next version of Matlab shipped with your code in it. But only a handful of projects that've tried that have been successful at making any money from it (the Stanford Parser is one example that has been).

My anecdotal impression is that the trend is therefore towards picking either openness or money as the goal, instead of trying the dual strategy. If openness is the goal, you pick MIT/BSD, because they're simpler and you hope lots of people will pick up your code, and maybe you'll get paid in citations and PR. If money is the goal, go for a full commercial licensing strategy, and either don't release the code publicly at all, or release it with a research-use-only/no-commercial-use clause.

mccoyst• 14 years ago

I don't think that most people understand the GPL. Everybody understands the basic spirit of it, but there are lots of details spread throughout that huge document. The preamble is longer than many permissive licenses. .That there is a preamble at all speaks to the complexity. It's too much for a small group or individual without access to a lawyer, and I don't think people in these cases are going to use a license that they don't fully understand.

zobzu3• 14 years ago

"The described trend is caused by consciously rejecting GPLs ideals,"

I very highly doubt that.

There are 3 cases I can think of:

1 - Business related models: "we're scared of GPL, we don't know what it is, but force devs to use smth else or code it from scratch"

2 - We're devs and due to 1, and possibly startups, we'll want non-GPL code. We'll also start to spam the community how GPL is bad in any possible way.

3 - All the devs are telling me GPL sux. I'm a cool and hip new person I'll do what they say to fit in. (I don't even care about what the GPL is made for).

Now, one could wonder, why'd they want to even use BSD or similar licenses? They could just go with public domain. THat's "real" freedom to their ears isn't it? Anyone does anything they want with it. Perfect.

Not so. They use BSD for credits. BSD forces you to retain copyright in the code, and that means if your name is in the code, you're getting a job very, very easily.

So you see, all the above only tells me one thing: People who know are misleading others (like you just did) on purpose for financial reasons, not because GPL ideals are wrong.

It would be OK if they at least mentioned the reasons in these simple terms. But that wouldn't help them achieve their goals, if others keep on using the GPL.

Shame on them, shame on you.

npsimons4• 14 years ago

I'd have to second this; there is a lot of FUD being put out about how the GPL "takes away" "freedoms" from the developer, when the truth is that if someone is writing something from scratch, they have de facto copyright and can relicense the code any way they want, at any time. Only versions released under GPL are out in the wild as "lost sales", and are more likely to garner good will than cause a loss of profits. As for BSD, well you wouldn't want your competition locking up your code and selling it back to you, now would you? And all the other licenses, while more finely nuanced to different needs, are also not as straightforward. I don't understand why GPL isn't more widespread.

Karunamon9• 14 years ago

>I don't understand why GPL isn't more widespread.

Honestly, for me? Viral nature. I don't want to put off a company using my code (well, for most things I do) because they don't want to be bound by the requirement to give away the source.

That's kind of why I'm a fan of Creative Commons, attribution share-alike, with possibly noncommercial depending on what it is and my mood at the time.

The GPL is just a pain in the ass for all involved. At least that's how I see it.

eternalban• 14 years ago

My cynical view is that at some point in the past few years, the perfect storm of outsourcing, funny money bonanzas aka IPOs, and the standing mindset of corporations to focus on their self interest (and not but) got us to this point. The winners have been the corporations (surprise) and a few (very few) rock star OSS developers. Everyone else is being taken for a ride, in my opinion.

I release OSS software myself. So far, Apache 2 only, but decided to switch for everything new to (L)GPL a couple of months ago. GPL makes sense economically, socially, and politically.

huhtenberg4• 14 years ago

Empowering with something that can't be enforced in practice is not exactly empowering, it's a make believe.

regularfry3• 14 years ago

Why do you say it can't be enforced?

Tangurena• 14 years ago

The religious war of "free" versus "open" is what turns a lot of people off.

Previously, when posting code I wrote, I'd pick MIT license which would allow users to do what they wanted. Picking GPL would mean that many potential users would be prohibited by company policy from using it.

billpatrianakos4• 14 years ago

Exactly. I'm one of those who honestly doesn't mind if anyone comes along, forks, closes the source, and makes a million off my code. I think it's a lot about money. There's also this rejection of the FOSS ideals. The GPL puts a lot of people off because it can be perceived as being more about ego and anti-profit rather than true freedom. For me personally, I prefer open source to free because I'm against restricting anyone's usage of my code and don't mind if they don't contribute back.

I think people's intentions have changed too. It was once all about paying things forward and now the importance seems to be placed on simply sharing with no regard to how the code is used or by whom.

rollypolly• 14 years ago

Better(?) title: The rise of permissive licenses.

mjn2• 14 years ago

That would require more data to conclude. The GPL is declining as a percentage of open-source licenses, but is that because more people are BSD/MIT-licensing their code, or because people who previously GPL'd their code (perhaps as part of a GPL/proprietary dual-licensing strategy) are just keeping it proprietary now?

Silhouette9• 14 years ago

I miss when I was a kid. If you made something cool and wanted to share it you'd just give it away as freeware on a BBS or magazine cover disk or something. You might include the source as well in case anyone wanted to hack on it. As comms technology evolved and two-way comms became more viable, a lot of people would publish an e-mail address, and if someone was interested enough to ask about how the author had achieved a certain effect or what sort of tools they used then they were often happy to start a discussion or share their code. No-one gave a damn about "licences" and "copyleft" or "freedom", we just hacked on code because it was fun and we shared it with fellow hackers because it felt good and we liked the healthy karma. The graphics/audio demo scene worked this way. Game modding communities worked this way. All kinds of useful little tools that helped the guy who wrote them and later helped other people as well got discovered and used this way.

I view the rise of EULAs and "terms and conditions" pages and all that junk to be one of the biggest retrograde steps in technological history, because most of the things in these documents are legal weasel words that don't have much to do with technology at all, or even with regular users who just want to use the software in a normal way for that matter. By playing the legal game, unfortunately the FSF has essential stolen the old embrace/extend/extinguish model from big business and applied it to hobbyist software development, legalificationalising it so that lots of people who just want to hack on code and share their results with anyone interested are now divided among fragmented communities and might not even know what they can and can't do any more. Way more time and effort gets spent worrying about licence agreements and how stuff can be used than anyone used to care about, and are we really any better off for it? I don't think we are.

It never seems to occur to anyone today that the reason things used to work well wasn't that hackers shared code because someone forced them to. It was that they shared code because they enjoyed it and other people often shared their own code in return for the same reason, without any formal obligation or having legalese bullshit plastered all over the top of every source file. I suspect if the only two licence agreements supported by law were "no copying without payment/permission" and "copy freely but give fair credit" no great harm would be done and a lot of people would waste a lot less time worrying about things other than building cool stuff with code. (Edit: Of course this is a simplification, but you get the idea.)

icebraining8• 14 years ago

Without a license, someone who copied the code into their application could then be sued by the original developer.

This was fine in the demo scene, but if you want to expand FOSS to businesses and paid applications, you need licenses. It wasn't the FSF who introduced that - it's how copyright works.

Maybe using permissive licenses would've been better than introducing the GPL, but you'd still need some license.

EULAs and TOS are completely different issues.

sparkie• 14 years ago

One of the big misunderstanding of copyleft licenses is who they are aimed at. The allegedly "more permissive" licenses are only more permissive to the developer, but they say nothing about how permissive the software is to the end user. Such "permissive license" may manifest as very restricted or even malicious software, so it's really incorrect to call it such. The GPL is permissive for the intended audience of software licenses - the end users.

npsimons4• 14 years ago

The GPL is permissive for the intended audience of software licenses - the end users.

Yes, precisely! And one of the ideals that Free software is designed around is that there are no end users - everyone can be a developer (or farm it out to anyone willing to work the job - ultimate free market capitalism). Unfortunately, there are still bills to be paid, and people are raised in the mindset of "I've got mine; who cares about anyone else?" and always grasping for more. So they think they can't make any money with GPL software, or it will expose them to legal worries, or they'll be forced to open source all their code. In the case of the first, this is categorically not true. In the latter two cases, no one has been able to bring up a credible example of when this has ever happened in the 20+ years the GPL has been in existence.

One last thing: the data used in the article is from a very well known Microsoft front company: http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Black_Duck

pron• 14 years ago

I'd be interested to hear from commercial developers of OSS how they chose their license, and about the business reasoning behind preferring copyleft or a permissive license.

zobzu3• 14 years ago

50% or more of the replies in this thread ARE commercial devs.

cpnks2• 14 years ago

My impression is that by numbers, we're moving from big projects -- like Linux, LibreOffice, Gnome, KDE, Gimp, gcc, etc. -- to smaller projects -- small JavaScript libraries on github that people fork, merge, etc.

GPL makes a lot of sense for the former. If you write the Linux kernel, a ton of companies would take it, enhance it, and not contribute back without GPL. That's a big part of what killed BSD. On the other hand, almost no one is going to reimplement Linux just to get around the GPL -- it's cheaper and easier to just give back.

For the little libraries, permissive makes more sense. If your JavaScript control has a license that isn't permitted in my project, I'll just write my own in a day or two. If I enhance it, that's not a core advantage to my business, so I'll likely contribute it back.

dima55• 14 years ago

The LGPL addresses these concerns, and is in the sweet spot, I think: You can use the library without opening the code using the library, but any changes to the library itself must be given back.

afsina• 14 years ago

Actually MPL or CDDL are like that. I am not an expert but I think they are easier to re-distiribute than LGPL.

saurik4• 14 years ago

It is very easy to work around the LGPL: the main thing it ends up protecting the user from is not being able to modify the exact functionality provided by the LGPL library inside of the surrounding software system.

As a case example: Apple has modifications to their version of WebCore (lower-level than WebKit, for context), a project shipped under LGPL (unlike WebKit, which is distributed under a modified BSD license).

However, they don't want to have to give out those changes, so they provide the source code to a WebKit with some minimal changes to call into new code that they then don't provide: it will compile, but you will get link errors.

Understand: this new code may be critical to the functionality of the library, and may be modifying the behavior of or even outright replacing key APIs and mechanisms of the LGPL library, in this case WebKit.

They then provide binary object files for the new functionality that they added, and the result is compiled together to form the unified WebCore dynamic library. Even though the result is a single linked-together library, this is totally legal under the LGPL, as I can still modify the original WebKit code if I wish and still manage to build Apple's modified WebKit binary.

In essence, the boundary around the LGPL code can be made very tight indeed, such that even code that is semantically required for the library to function does not fall under the redistribution requirements of the GPL part of the LGPL code.

there2• 14 years ago

If you write the Linux kernel, a ton of companies would take it, enhance it, and not contribute back without GPL.

That is always touted by GPL advocates, but where is the proof? Where are all the companies enhancing non-GPL-licensed software and not giving anything back? Where are the companies making money selling private forks of enhanced FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Ruby, Python, Ruby on Rails, X11, Apache, etc.?

It doesn't make sense. Maintaining your own changes in a big software project is a pain in the ass. It's worth contributing changes upstream if only so you don't have to maintain your own patches and re-merge them every release.

y0ghur7_xxx• 14 years ago

didn't apple take bsd and build osx on it without contributing back?

sedachv• 14 years ago

> That is always touted by GPL advocates, but where is the proof? Where are all the companies enhancing non-GPL-licensed software and not giving anything back?

They're doing it to GPL software. Take a look at pretty much any embedded Linux project and you will find a GPL violation. For example, most ARM devices are unusable without binary drivers that rely on specific builds of specific Linux kernel versions (example - you can't get sound or accelerated video on the Raspberry Pi!). I've had one plug computer maker tell me they have a custom version of Linux and they won't provide the source. Whenever I come across anything like that I report it at http://gpl-violations.org/

davidw2• 14 years ago

> Where are all the companies enhancing non-GPL-licensed software and not giving anything back? Where are the companies making money selling private forks of enhanced FreeBSD

Sun Microsystems?

I think part of it has to do with a tipping point: if you can hire up a good chunk of the key contributors and run with it, then it's easy to make a proprietary fork, and at the same time weaken the open source project. The GPL prevents this. The other thing that prevents it is if it's impossible/difficult to hire up enough people for a proprietary fork to outstrip development of an open fork. So with permissive licensed projects, you want a big core team comprising people with diverse interests and incentives.

Also, I think things have changed over time - perhaps, 'back in the day', there was more the idea of not contributing back by default, whereas I think far more companies have made their peace with open source these days, and understanding that being involved and contributing are good things. This tilts things in favor of permissive licenses.

smashing• 14 years ago

Microsoft's Windows Services for UNIX Version 3.5[1] and earlier versions are based off of NetBSD[2]. Until recently, 2008-9, they contributed nothing back.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=274

[2] http://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/platforms.html

protomyth2• 14 years ago

The BSD License didn't kill the BSD-based operating systems, the AT&T lawsuit stopped them for a number of years.

wmf• 14 years ago

Didn't BSDI hire many of the developers and then contribute nothing back? I'd think that was a pretty serious cause as well.

Semiapies2• 14 years ago

Also, probably a first-mover advantage, early on. Linux, the GNU toolkit, etc. come on to the scene and are based on GPL, so a lot of developers's first experience with open/permissive/whatever software licensing was GPL. Over time, though, developers become aware of alternatives, and for various reasons, many use them.

gillianseed2• 14 years ago

So here's my take, GPL is pretty much the de facto choice for full open source applications, and here it makes much sense as it's a 'finished' product, and in many cases the individual parts of that finished product which are reusable are licenced permissively.

Meanwhile components like libraries, frameworks, have since long leaned towards permissive or atleast LGPL style licencing due to them constituting only a small part of whatever program they are used in.

Like the edited article states, the author was wrong in saying GPL is declining or that projects are in any way switching, the thing is that these days we see lots of new open source developments in web technology frameworks and these frameworks are predominantly permissively licenced as they are basically components on which full web solutions are built.

And given the sheer number of web oriented open source tech popping up these days it's no wonder we are seeing new permissively licenced code dwarfing new GPL licenced code these days. For example when I viewed the 'Popular Watched Repositories' list on github, the only ones I know are GPL licenced were Linux and Git, and the list was heavily dominated by web targeted projects.

Now there seems to be a strong anti-GPL sentiment in web dev, which is likely due to people working there relying heavily on open source components for their proprietary solutions and as such they simply can't use GPL, hence complaints.

Bottom line is that there is no 'one type fits all' licence, which is why we have licence proliferation. I've always held the belief that whatever the author chooses is the right option, be it permissive, GPL or even keeping it proprietary.

sg2342• 14 years ago

I will write software that will be released under a GNU license because the entity that bought my time to do it can decide to put the result under whatever license suits their goal.

However, if the result of my work will be made available under a more permissive license i (most likely) demand less money since it ensures that i can reuse whatever i wrote.

emaste• 14 years ago

You are correct that it is cheaper and easier to just give back, but that is generally true and isn't unique to the GPL. There are a great number of companies using the BSDs as the basis for their embedded projects, and they contribute their enhancements and bug fixes precisely because it is less expensive over time to do that than to keep those changes proprietary.

The USL lawsuit is what hampered the BSDs early on, and allowed Linux to get so much traction in mindshare, not the license.

mattbriggs4• 14 years ago

I know the ruby and python worlds are almost universally BSD-ish licenses, and you will get a lot of flack for releasing something GPL. The reason is that most companies that use ruby or python libraries are totally happy to contribute back patches and be part of the open source ecosystem, but releasing something as GPL makes that impossible. And since there are a lot of companies doing ruby and python, there is a great deal of frustration when someone puts that block up.

Another interesting thing about that world is the level of quality and participation in an open source ecosystem that doesn't legally mandate participation. It leads me to think of the GPL as an exclusionary license.

lclarkmichalek• 14 years ago

I've taken to using LGPL for libraries, and GPL for applications. LGPL takes the stuff I like about BSD (everyone can use, including non GPL compatible stuff), and adds some more stuff I want (viral nature). For instance, I've been working on a platform for "competitive programming", where people write AIs to play games against each other. The game engines (programs that coordinate the game between players) are licensed under GPL, for they are my work, and I want people to contribute back if they use something out of them. The game libraries are LGPL however, as I don't want to dissuade people from using the libraries, but would like them to publish improvements they make.

mattbriggs4• 14 years ago

Call me an idiot for saying it, but I would rather believe that people fundamentally aren't jerks and rely on community spirit rather then legally enforcing cooperation :)

I think the reason that happens for ruby and python is so many of the people using those platforms are startups where the technologists are the guys calling the shots, and it probably doesn't work universally, but I am glad I work in a part of the industry where we let people participate on their own terms, it just seems more meaningful.

I totally get that it isn't like that everywhere though, and the only way to get good cooperation is to hold a gun to the head of large corporations.

npsimons4• 14 years ago

The reason is that most companies that use ruby or python libraries are totally happy to contribute back patches and be part of the open source ecosystem,

Then they should have absolutely no problem with the GPL.

but releasing something as GPL makes that impossible

Please explain how requiring distributors to include access to source code makes it impossible to contribute source code.

mattbriggs4• 14 years ago

Because unless a software company is specifically structured to not make money off its source code, giving that away is pretty much the dumbest thing they can do. So when they want to build something and are evaluating options, if there is an MIT library that will get them most of the way, they will use it. If there is a commercial library that will get them most of the way, they will use it. If there is a GPL library, it doesn't matter how good it is, they will not use it and instead build their own thing from scratch.

ww520• 14 years ago

They are happy to contribute back the patches of a GPL library, but they don't want to open source their entire product just because it links a GPL library.

binarycrusader• 14 years ago

Easy, especially with GPLv3 you now have patents issues to contend with. That makes the entire process burdensome and expensive.

iamgilesbowkett• 14 years ago

I like @cpnks's thing about scale -- GPL making more sense for giant projects -- but I think of GPL as a legacy license from the days when open source was a radical idea.

I think you could argue that it took radical people with radical opinions to make open source what it is today, but GPL is overkill for modern development and (in my opinion) completely unnecessary.

Attempting to control what people do with the software they create is, in my opinion, not only wildly inappropriate but also very self-defeating, as it limits the number of people who can do anything with your license. Likewise, there's this:

"Take a look at pretty much any embedded Linux project and you will find a GPL violation. For example, most ARM devices are unusable without binary drivers that rely on specific builds of specific Linux kernel versions (example - you can't get sound or accelerated video on the Raspberry Pi!). I've had one plug computer maker tell me they have a custom version of Linux and they won't provide the source."

(from @sedachv's comment)

The sheer number of GPL violations out there in real life point to the fact that the license is unenforceable in practical terms, because of the legal budget a project would need in order to prosecute what is essentially an epidemic of victimless crime. If your project uses GPL, you're more likely to see an increase in corporations shrugging off open source licenses (or laughing at them) than an increase in corporations contributing code back. GPL violations are not a criminal matter. You can only enforce them with civil lawsuits. Who's going to pay for that?

Imagine if Linux aggressively asserted its rights under the GPL against every violator out there. it'd be a full-time job for a whole team of lawyers -- an astronomical expense which absolutely nobody would benefit from, except for the lawyers themselves.

There's absolutely no reason to expect companies to comply with the GPL, other than good manners and good ethics, both of which are rarer than they ought to be. The GPL just encourages those qualities to become even rarer. It's self-defeating and it's bad for open source in general.

gillianseed2• 14 years ago

>There's absolutely no reason to expect companies to comply with the GPL, other than good manners and good ethics

Nonsense, they are legally bound by the licence to provide source code when distributing binaries should the recipient request it. Obviously there are violators counting on not being taken to court but they are still violators and are running the risk of being being sued.

Let's say that Oracle would stop releasing the source code to the enhancements they make on Linux for their distribution, do you think Red Hat, IBM and other large contributors would just let Oracle use their enhancements while violating the GPL by not releasing their own? Hardly, they would take them to court.

GPL works well for this kind of cooperative project where lots of different players pool their resources as everyone is legally bound to release their enhancements. This obviously doesn't mean that every licence violation will be brought to justice, but the important thing is that they are in their right to so should they find it necessary.

However the fully open source development of Linux doesn't fit all projects, looking at FreeBSD it seems it's mainly being used by companies who wants to incorporate it into proprietary solutions where they make changes to the kernel/system which are used as a competitive edge and thus don't want to open source those.

Again, there is no 'one size fits all' solution and as such it's a good thing there's choice.

npsimons4• 14 years ago

FTA:

"That was the conclusion of Matthew Aslett's analysis of recent data from Black Duck Software"

I'll just leave this here:

http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Black_Duck

mystilleef• 14 years ago

Am I missing something? Where is the data?

GPL, copyleft use declining faster than ever

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