
Is the GPL Really Declining? - LaSombra
https://meshedinsights.com/2017/05/03/is-the-gpl-really-declining/
======
libeclipse
I 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.

~~~
buserror
I tend to agree, up to a point, however I still use the GPL because it at
least gives me a leg to stand on for people actually ripping your code and
selling it as is... (What I call the packagers)

I'm sure that if Linux wasn't GPL, you'd have 'vendors' selling 'HP Linux' and
'Corp Linux' to their locked in customers in no time at all. The only reason
Linux grew up to this point is that the vendors are _forced_ to contribute
back and cooperate (up to a point). Mind you it might also be the reason Linux
is so bloated these days, but at least there is no vendor lock in...

As a small example, someone decided a few years back to release a "Arduino UI"
over my own simavr[0] as an indigogo project. ie trying to be paid to package
a demo I made (for free): he had screenshots, a few promises and no source
code. I managed to email the guy telling him I wanted to see the source code
_of the whole lot_ and somehow, the project fizzed out.

If my project had been BSD, I might have seen someone making money from my
project and associate my name with something that I had zero control on. When
I give a project away, I want it to stay free for use, and I really hate to
see 'packagers' who don't contribute anything at all move over and try to
monetize it.

Same story as when I released freewares a few years back, I had a note saying
it was NOT ok to package it on 'CDs' sold around.

[0]: [https://github.com/buserror/simavr](https://github.com/buserror/simavr)

~~~
ygaf
>If my project had been BSD, I might have seen someone making money from my
project and associate my name with something that I had zero control on.

If he went along with his product being forced to be open, what then? It still
has your name associated with it, he might still sell some copies. I'm just
not getting the principles.

~~~
buserror
I would just have taken his source, compiled it and provided it for free -- he
had no real intentions of opening it, and in fact never released his 'code'
afterward, which proved my point.

it's not the first time I see that, at my previous company, a guy took most of
my in-house (closed source) middleware layers and was selling them as a
'product' _as is_ on the interweb.

~~~
ygaf
I don't think it's right to call that having control. But whatever, your post
was more honest than the average GPL advocate's.

------
sgentle
> The GPL is a fine open source license that grants all the permissions needed
> by developer communities that adopt it. There is no sense in which it is not
> "permissive", so to use that term as an antonym to "copyleft" verges on
> abuse.

Sigh. This attitude makes it enormously difficult to have any kind of
conversation about the tradeoffs of open source licenses, because it reveals a
profound lack of perspective or willingness to admit that even your darling
license isn't perfect.

Can we not just accept that there are two different attitudes towards freedom?
One says that true freedom being able to do whatever you want, the other says
true freedom is restricting others from infringing on your freedom (and being
thus restricted in turn).

This is anarchism vs libertarianism, Jon Stewart vs Bill Maher liberalism, and
non-interventionism vs neoconservatism. Do you preserve freedom even if you
need to do it by causing unfreedom? It's a question that has resisted all
attempts to find a simple answer despite generations of attempts.

It could be that all these people just need to read the GPL to find out that
there's no sense in which being required to do something is not permissive. Or
perhaps a little humility is in order, and we could make the effort the
understand that different ideologies can, if not agree, at least respect each
other.

~~~
dleslie
An anarchist ought not care what the license terms are; they are already
operating in an ethical framework that revokes concern for a collection of
words that rely on state violence to have meaning.

~~~
sounds
Cool! A discussion where the anarchists are represented clearly!

Do I understand libertarianism the way sgentle does? He compares
anarchism:libertarianism::permissive license:GPL, so I guess he's using
libertarianism in the sense of "absolute minimum amount of government
necessary to enforce property rights."

As to whether you preserve freedom best by causing "unfreedoms," philosophy
already has some pretty useful things to say, such as ue_'s comment:

    
    
      Hegel ... described the freedom of the savage being a kind
      of unrefined freedom
    

Some freedoms are conflicting by their very definition. Resolving the conflict
is at its core the imposition of an ordering over the set of all freedoms, or
in other words, a value system. Almost all the discussion on this article can
be reduced to a comparison of well known value systems and attempts to sway
readers to one or another.

------
geokon
I'm a bit surprised "dual licensing" hasn't come up at all in this discussion.
To me that is the most logical next-step from the GPL. (ex: The Qt/JUCE people
are using it to great effect)

\- If you want to work on expanding on what I started and then sharing it with
everyone, then that's great!

\- If you want to make money with my work - then lets get in touch and work
out some compensation. Seems only fair.. no?

It's a little fuzzy because you can have opensource projects that make money,
but it fits the general spirit of things.

Though I'm not sure how it would work if for instance someone sends you a
merge request.... do they have to also send something signing over the rights
to their work? Is there a better license that does this automatically?

(does anyone know how Qt handles that for example?)

~~~
dbcurtis
Yes, indeed. The submitter needs to sign over copyright. Otherwise you don't
have the right to relicense their work under some other for-compensation
license. All GNU projects require copyright assignment, for an example. The
GPL license is silent on copyright assignment of pull requests, so you have to
execute a document outside the license. I believe some other open source
licenses address this directly, but I'm not sure which ones.

~~~
the8472
> Yes, indeed. The submitter needs to sign over copyright. Otherwise you don't
> have the right to relicense their work under some other for-compensation
> license.

Wouldn't it be possible to require patches to be supplied under CC-0, which
would allow the maintainer to take the patch and incorporate it in the GPLed
source?

~~~
dbcurtis
CC0 is a disclaimer of copyright, so yes. The essential test you need to pass
for dual licensing is "no one else has copyright in this work". Good
clarifying question.

IANAL

------
nihonde
There was a time when it seemed inconceivable that developers would be
motivated to release code under MIT or BSD style licenses that lacked the
"viral" distribution obligations of the GPL. Back then, it seemed obvious that
a healthy open source community was going to need to force "borrowers" of the
code to contribute their improvements in order to avoid freeloading. However,
the reality is that plenty of healthy open source communities exist on MIT
style licenses and even include corporate community members who are willing to
subsidize improvements that get merged into the public editions. In this way,
the "failure" of GPL is a story about people behaving well as a community
without needing to have legal whips cracked at them

~~~
watwut
Licenses are legal and public relations whips cracked at people. They would
not work otherwise.

------
ajdlinux
The last time I went through my employer's process for releasing an open
source project, the attorney assigned to our case emailed to ask if we
_really_ wanted to choose the GPL, as we'd stated on the application form,
because getting approval for MIT or Apache was going to be quicker.

We advised that yes, we did want the GPL, and indeed we didn't run into any
further problems.

Keeping up the good fight in the midst of a megacorp, one tiny little utility
at a time...

~~~
dleslie
In my experience the barrier is always the lawyers.

~~~
asdfjlkasdf88
Anecdotally, part of the reason why is the lawyers I've talked to don't feel
like FSF have offered enough clarification regarding legal concerns, and the
hostility of the community.

When the community will burn you to the ground for inadvertently shipping a
binary without code, even after you've apologized and shipped the code, why
would legal want to bother with them?

There's been half a dozen knee-jerk $XYZ Corp is in gross violation of the
GPL! headlines here, only for the conversation to go "No, they're not. Go
away."

Look at the SystemD thing and countless other situations. The mantra is "open
and welcome and use our stuff!" Then they go all Walter if you slip a toe over
the line.

Neckbeards need to get that they're responsible for the apprehension. It's
another form of tribalism. You either need to be perfect in how you fit in,
never err, or we'll figuratively tear you a new one.

------
dagw
Comparing the mid to late 90s with today it seems hackers have on the whole
become more commercially minded. Back in the 90s there was a more idealistic
and 'punk' ethos surrounding the hacker scene with documents like the Hacker
Manifesto being a thing people actually believed in and aspired to. The GPL
fit right into that.

Then the world changed a bit and all of a sudden people realized that you
could become both a millionaire and even a billionaire as a software
developer. And do you know what's cooler than being part of an idealistic punk
scene? A billion dollars!

Now licenses that got in the way of you making money weren't as attractive
anymore. And licenses that made it easier for you to make money off of
software written by other people became the new hot thing.

That at least is my naive take on what I've observed over the past 20-odd
years.

~~~
err4nt
I'll offer a little counterpoint to that. I had known 'free software' as
shareware until ~2001 when I had my first introduction to Linux. I was very
curious, and took to open source software AND the ideals very easily.

Because of my experience as a teenager poking around operating systems, fixing
xorg.conf files after compiling nVidia drivers, and running and using
thousands of different software applications - tools for many many different
jobs I had never been exposed to before. I consider open-source being an
education I received that has helped me to use computers and software today.

Because I have benefitted so much from open-source, now that I'm in a position
where I can write and release software I am very motivated to give back to the
same community that first gave to me. I hope that by producing work and
releasing it to open-source I can help build up those who follow in my
footsteps - and that's a richer treasure than dollars in my pocket.

Having said all of this, I can't choose GPL for giving away my own software
because the viral nature of it feels like a chain letter. It leaves a really
bad taste in your mouth and I wouldn't want anybody to feel compelled to pick
between using something I'm TRYING to give away for free and having to GPL
their project, or not be able to use something I'm trying to give away for
free just because of the license. So I keep choosing MIT, which basically
says: 'you have to acknowledge that I wrote it, and you can't sue me because
of damages you got from using it' but leaves pretty much any other use (even
commercial reselling) open.

I can't imagine anybody looking at a piece of code under MIT and having
objections, or a reason why the license prevents them from using it - and THAT
is the point of free software to me. GPL software is arguably LESS free than
the more liberal licenses :D

~~~
cr0sh
You had me up to the end of your third paragraph, then you dropped off a
cliff.

You're free to believe and think what you want, of course, but the whole point
of the GPL is make sure that the code is "paid forward", and not locked up
somewhere along the chain.

The GPL is there so that future up-and-coming curious kids can see the code,
and learn from it - much like you did.

I grew up in a slightly different world. The GPL first came about in 1989; I
was a sophomore in high school, and had no idea about it. The "free software"
code I learned from was printed in magazines, that you typed in. As time wore
on, though, something along the line changed - code to type in was getting
less, and proprietary was growing. I held some of that at bay with my Amiga
(which still carried some of the spirit in the magazines of the time), but
still change kept coming.

Several years went by, until in about 1995 I was introduced to Linux by a
friend of mine (who, interestingly, I met via a 2600 meetup) - and also to the
GPL by extension. Here was an entire operating system I could see the code of!
Amazing! It was all there - out in the open - for me to play with, learn from,
and modify as needed or desired! Freedom! All I had to do was agree to pay it
forward...

...and I'm ok with that. I don't want a younger person like me to be stuck in
the dim place again, without access to the code to learn from. I also want
them to experience the thrill of having the code available to work with. I
don't want anyone - myself or others - to take that away.

And believe me, if a corporation really wanted to, they could work to lock up
non-GPL'd works. All they need to do is become much more popular, and let the
original work wither on the vine. It may take decades for that to happen (BSD
vs OS-X?) - but it can happen. They can wait. But that kid 50 or 100 years
from now? What about him or her?

~~~
err4nt
Well I would consider licenses like MIT, LGPL, and some of the CC licenses to
be _more_ free than the GPL, so I expect more MIT and public domain code will
survive and continue to be used and available for those people in 50 or 100
years :)

------
avar
The main reason for this in my opinion is that the fear free software had of
permissive licenses in the 90s by an large didn't come true.

The GPL is excellent to guard against the sort of embrace, extend and close
that the GPL prevented when it came to GCC, Emacs etc. back in its day, but
would likely have otherwise happened.

Times are different now, and while there's still some of that going on (e.g.
Sony with FreeBSD) for the vast majority of free software out there companies
see no point in maintaining some value-added fork, it's just going to cost
them money. E.g. SQLite & cURL are a good example of this.

Nowadays your project is much more likely to die because of overly restrictive
licensing than because some company steals it from you and refuses to give
back. Imagine how much smaller SQLite would be if it was GPL 3 instead of
public domain, ditto for cURL.

~~~
cr0sh
> Times are different now

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.

------
watwut
I would not use GPL for my projects, because I can not use GPL licensed
libraries in work. We use plenty of Apache licensed libs, therefore when I did
open source contributions I contributed back to that pool. It was no brainer
to me.

I also like the freedom in it - GPL is a bit about forcing people to do things
your way because ideology which is attitude I find offputing. Apache is less
political and more giving - here is a thing use it.

~~~
belorn
When your workplace distribute the software you write to their customers, what
political ideology does the license force onto them?

~~~
watwut
What does that have to do with anything? OSS and tech generally likes to
praise itself as more rational fact based, but demagoguery is sometimes
downright ridiculous.

If I distribute open source library under GPL, the advantage of GPL is
supposed to be that users of my library have to provide source code to their
users. Making it "viral" and preventing them to do close source business. It
was written this way because of ideology authors had - treating open source as
moral value.

~~~
smichel17
That's just the thing: software freedom does have moral value.

Power imbalances are abused. That's how you end up with stuff like nsa
backdoors. Software freedom helps fix the power imbalance between users and
developers.

~~~
watwut
That is kinda like saying that letters being private make it harder to caught
terrorists, so we should make it question of morality to make all letters
public.

------
stonesixone
FWIW, both Los Angeles County and the City and County of San Francisco are
leaning towards GPL for their open source voting system projects. And these
are new, ambitious projects just starting out.

For Los Angeles, see page 24 of their RFI: [http://vsap.lavote.net/request-
for-information/](http://vsap.lavote.net/request-for-information/)

For San Francisco, see the March 2017 Director's Report here:
[http://sfgov.org/electionscommission/commission-agenda-
packe...](http://sfgov.org/electionscommission/commission-agenda-packet-
march-15-2017)

------
motters
For software I've written while working at companies I didn't have control
over the license choice, but for that which I've written voluntarily nearly
all of it (and there's quite a laundry list now) is under GPL or AGPL. This is
because, as some other comments have mentioned, I want any other users of the
software to have the same capabilities to change it as I did. I don't want
there to be secret proprietary versions which then get distributed in closed
form denying the potential for participation.

The ability of users to have genuine control over their systems has been under
sustained attack for a long time. I may be only one developer but at least I
can make a small ding in the dark empire of bad software practices.

------
alkonaut
I could be inclined to use GPL if I made some end user application rather than
library code. Simply because I'd prefer the project not to be forked. If
someone invents a great feature for my app, I'd like that to be either merged
or killed, not merged into a fork.

The problem of the GPL is that it assumes that infinite forking of software is
a good thing (more choice!) when the opposite is normally true - it's better
to have ONE project that isn't perfect for anyone, but that is easy to find
and actively maintained, than it is to have a large number of forks each with
the pet feature of different users.

For library code it's a different story. If I write a library I'd hope to get
commercial use of it. I suppose you could argue that in that case you should
be using the LGPL rather than BSD/MIT/CDDL/Apache, but I honesly think the
LGPL is underused simply because of it sounds a bit like GPL and it makes
people nervous.

~~~
icebraining
The GPL doesn't prevent others from forking your project, we've seen quite a
bit of hostile forks over the years.

~~~
gribbly
True, but this is typically a good thing in my opinion, the code remains fully
open all the same and the developers/userbase will determine which project is
the better.

------
pjmlp
Yes it is, in about 10 years time, Linux kernel might be one of the few
surviving GPL projects in wider use.

We will get back to PD and shareware days, when releasing source code was a
nice feature, but not necessarily compulsory.

The speed embedded OEM are replacing gcc with clang in their forks, without
having to keep contributing back, is a good example of things will evolve.

Or the hardware companies that bundle *BSD instead of GNU/Linux on their
boxes.

Or Apple and Google ongoing effort's to clean (L)GPL from their stacks.

~~~
belorn
Predicting the death of Debian in 10 years is a odd call since I have not seen
any indication of decline in the use of Debian and its derivatives.

Last time someone checked, projects in debian where around 90% GPL.

~~~
pjmlp
How many of those 90% GPL projects are actually used in the real world across
companies, specially the SV loved ones?

~~~
belorn
A lot. I don't remember a exact study on popcon top 100, but just going main
top 5, let see.

top 1: Gnu sed. License: GPL.

top 2 (if you ignore libs): base-passwd. GPL

top 3: GNU core utilities: Mostly if not exclusively GPL.

top 4: debianutils: SMAIL GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

top 5: dpkg: GPL (got bsd parts is distributed as a whole under gpl).

[http://popcon.debian.org/main/by_inst](http://popcon.debian.org/main/by_inst)
if you want to dig through it. A lot of the top is part of base install.
Further down we got things like wget, which surprise surprise, is gpl. Could
always try to make a debian machine without udev, which is GPL. Honestly,
making a debian installation, using debian main archives, without any
copyleft'ed software would be a nice project just to see if anything
resembling a function operative system would remain. One would have to start
by using BSD kernel (which is supported), and go from there to try mimic a bsd
operative system.

------
kstenerud
I've always likened GPL promoters and promoters of the more permissive
licenses to conservatives vs liberals.

GPL users are more worried about someone taking and not giving back. Other
license users are more worried about lost opportunity to proliferate. In the
same way, conservatives are more worried about bad behavior among their fellow
citizens, whereas liberals are more worried about lost opportunities for their
fellow citizens to grow and flourish. In every endeavor, there is risk and
opportunity, and they must be balanced somehow. Conservatives err on the side
of reducing risk of bad actors, who can spoil it for everyone. Liberals err on
the side of reducing lost opportunities, which prevent us from going forward
as a whole.

It's also why I won't argue in favor of one over the other. You'd have about
as much success arguing in in favor of liberal ideals to a conservative, or
conservative ideals to a liberal. Their reasoning is emotional, which is why
it gets uncomfortable real fast, and they dig their heels in, pulling all
sorts of "facts" to prove their side.

~~~
wiz21c
To put it in a more positive way : GPL users think about others first and
themselves second. Anti-GPL people think the other way around. I wouldn't say
either is good or bad, but I'd say they sure don't mix well together.

~~~
kstenerud
Wow, that was fast. You're pro-GPL, and it shows in how you colored your words
to favor your side and denigrate the other.

~~~
wiz21c
well, just like the OP I guess :-)

But frankly I didn't mean to make it sound better. I truly think that some
people think for themselves first and for the others second. It's not a matter
of selfishness, it's a matter of direction. I can think about many people who
were positive for the society in both categories. And I'd even say that we
tend to change our "colour" every now and then.

For example, many private companies are greedy, but it doesn't stop them to
provide good things to me (it'd be better if they gave them away for free, but
well, they have to make a living too). I'd say GPL is the other direction but
as many mentioned, although we may like the idea, we have to recognize that
the success (and therefore the value for society) is not exactly massive.

But you're right I'm rather "pro GPL, anti capital and maybe a bit of an
anarchist too" :-) But well, it doesn't prevent me to work on commercial
things and GPL things :-) The fact is that it's very tough to discuss
political ideas without getting too involved.

------
zzzeek
> Surely the number of users using the software is the best metric?

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.

------
shadowmint
Just idly...

> Deciding which is dominant may well be a matter for your ideological biases
> rather than an objective absolute.

No, it's really not. That's what objective means; that you count the numbers
and acknowledge that one number if bigger than another, by a significant
margin.

> If I can pick my own metric, I can prove anything!

Sure, but there are some pretty solid metrics that no one is going to argue
you're 'fudging the numbers to suit your bias on'. For example:

    
    
        - Total number of projects with a given license.
        - Total number of dependencies on projects with a given license.
        - Total number of new projects with a given license per year/month, normalized.
        - Total number of new dependencies on a given license per year/month, normalized.
    

What is this rubbish about deciding which license you like the most because
you think it has some kind of pretty ethical features, or calling it 'copy
left' vs 'reciprocal behaviour'.

You're just muddying the waters and making people who support GPL look stupid.

Statistics can be jimmied to show a specific tale, its true... but you know
what?

A bunch of graphs, a raw data set I can check myself and a repo with the
software that generated the graphs; I'll believe what I see in that any day
over some arbitrary talk about how you can't really ever believe anything
because heck, everyone has a bias.

Hand waving is a lot easier than actually digging up data and checking the
numbers; but it's largely meaningless he-said-she-said-they-said.

A little while ago I met some folk who were absolutely convinced that hg was
winning the hearts and minds of people around the world (over git). They were
and are wrong. So is this post. ...yet people continue to argue the point.

I think it's easy to end up trapped in a bubble where all you see is people
who agree with you, and you can't see what's really going on.

Everyone now and then you actually _do_ need to dig through some hard data
yourself and reevaluate your own assumptions I think...

------
faragon
BSD/Apache-like licenses are getting most of the traction, because of GPL
"viral" issues, e.g. you can not ship GPLv3 Ghostscript with your product,
even being "free", as it is not redistributable (the option is to tell the
customer that Ghostscript is a "pre-requisite"). Although I have to recognize
that 20 years ago I was more idealist than now, I'm not against the GPL, but
against using the GPL not for freedom or sharing back modifications, but as a
maquivelic vendor lock-in (e.g. spending $$$ in legal advice and some times
not being 100% sure if using something is safe or not because of contradictory
things).

------
ploggingdev
How do investors view a startup that only builds GPL licensed software. Eg-
Let's say Gitlab used only GPL, would it be a major red flag to investors?
What about businesses, would they be willing to be buy GPL licensed software?

Any examples of startups that only build GPL licensed software?

~~~
marcinkuzminski
When we went to raise money for RhodeCode which was GPL at that time, it was
no issue for investors. Nowe we're AGPL and switching the license was no issue
for current investors too.

Also so far no questions about AGPL beeing a problem for our customers.

------
endymi0n
> 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.

~~~
pluma
Sounds more like "the market is growing but GPL is growing less". Dying would
imply lack of growth altogether, no?

------
grabcocque
I 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.

~~~
glogla
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.

~~~
greyman
It boils down to a philosophical question about whether "tivoization" is good
or bad. I am with Linus on this, I believe it is nothing wrong with it and I
therefore doesn't support GPL v3.

~~~
quadrangle
There's nothing wrong with a world in which most citizens simply cannot
control and modify most of the products they own? When everything runs
software and communities of people can share ideas / updates that make the
products better, you think there's nothing wrong with artificial restrictions
that block people from doing this?

Think of Stallman's initial story: he could program the printer upstairs to
tell users over the network when it was jammed. But with the new version of
the printer, he couldn't get the source code. A Tivoized printer would give
him the code and then refuse to run his modification. So, you think there's
nothing wrong with "screw you, you can go all day and find out only hours
later that all your prints failed, even though you know how to fix this"?
That's what Tivoization does, and this mild example is just a very mild one.
It could be hell of a lot worse.

------
rbanffy
Seems to be a dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14257316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14257316)

Did detection fail?

~~~
lorenzhs
No, the dupe detector was changed about a year ago to allow for resubmission
of articles that failed to gain traction. If you have questions for the mods,
email them. Discussing the dupe detector is off-topic and boring.

~~~
rbanffy
Do you have a link to that announcement? I tried to look it up to gather more
information without bothering the mods.

~~~
sctb
This is all I could quickly find:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10203933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10203933).
This change was just to bring the software in line with the FAQ, which has
mentioned this since 2014.

