

Ask HN: How does the GPL affect open-source contributions? - philbo

At my work, we&#x27;re about to open-source a bunch of projects. Prior to now, we have released all of our projects under the terms of the GPL. But there is some healthy discussion going on as to what effects the GPL may be having on the likelihood of their receiving contributions from outside our organisation.<p>With that debate in mind, I set up this survey to try and get some broad data about the subject:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;forms&#x2F;d&#x2F;1pBe1R-GBHUju0bbG4mnAdEVN8dJIjZHQvhQ_ZMCKexY&#x2F;viewform?usp=send_form<p>Just to clarify, we&#x27;re not talking about <i>usage</i> here. The projects that we&#x27;ve released thus far have done pretty well on that front. It is specifically the topic of contributions to the codebase that we are interested in.<p>If you have time to fill in the survey, that would be great and very much appreciated. It is only four multiple-choice questions, and I will share the results here. If they&#x27;re interesting enough, I may blog about them too.<p>Thanks.
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philbo
Posting the results because I said I would. But there are only seven of them
so they're definitely not representative of anything significant, sorry.

    
    
        1. Do the terms of your employment prevent you from contributing to GPL-licensed projects during the course of your work?
    
        * No, I am allowed to contribute to GPL projects as part of my work.: 7 (100%)
        * Yes, my work forbids me from contributing to all open-source projects: 0 (0%)
        * Yes, my work forbids me from contributing to GPL projects specifically: 0	(0%)
    
        2. Regardless of your answer to 1, is your decision to contribute to a project on a personal basis affected by whether that project is GPL-licensed?
    
        * No, the GPL does not affect my decision: 1 (14%)
        * Yes, the GPL makes me more likely to contribute to a project: 3 (43%)
        * Yes, the GPL makes me less likely to contribute to a project: 3 (43%)
        * Yes, I only contribute to GPL projects: 0 (0%)
        * Yes, I never contribute to GPL projects: 0 (0%)
    
        3. Do you think the GPL is a good or bad license choice for standalone/executable projects?
    
        * The GPL is a good choice for standalone projects: 5 (71%)
        * The GPL is a bad choice for standalone projects: 1 (14%)
        * I'm undecided or indifferent about the GPL: 1 (14%)
    
        4. Do you think the GPL is a good or bad license choice for library/framework projects?
    
        * The GPL is a good choice for library projects: 1 (14%)
        * The GPL is a bad choice for library projects: 5 (71%)
        * I'm indifferent or undecided about the GPL: 1 (14%)

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brudgers
[clarification: I believe that businesses are not moral agents]

The business case for releasing code under GPL comes down to three points:

    
    
       1. It is legally required because of other GPL'd code.
       2. It has value as goodwill.
       3. It is part of a dual licensing strategy.
    

Item [1] is black and white.

There is a gradient from [2] to [3]. Community editions most obviously serve a
mixed bag of motives under dual licensing. Under other operating models such
as paid support, the motives are a bit more obscure.

The downside of GPL is that someone has to take responsibility for enforcement
and to a lesser extent maintenance and triaging pull requests. From a business
standpoint, if these activities aren't worth the effort, it makes less sense
to GPL code than to keep it proprietary or MIT/Apache/BSD license it and get
on with life.

~~~
philbo
So in our case, the projects being open-sourced are not part of our core
business. I guess our aims for open-sourcing them are two-fold:

1\. To promote us in the eyes of prospective employees.

2\. To benefit from collaboration on what would otherwise be in-house tools.

That second point is something we're not seeing a ton of so far. Whether the
presence of the GPL has an effect on that, is what I'm wondering.

Unfortunately there have only been 6 responses to the survey so far, but that
highly limited and unscientific sample would indicate that contributions
aren't affected by the GPL.

~~~
brudgers
There are more open source projects than volunteers. Something has to be
pretty awesome to attract people's passions and time commitments.

My impression is that a job is more attractive if the work includes working on
popular open source projects used in-house than in-house projects that are
open sourced.

Lastly, many big companies will still need lawyering for anything open-sourced
under GPL because they are targets for lawsuits and GPL is so easy to violate.
GPL and other copyleft license compliance is not passive from the perspective
of software developers, just from end users.

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philbo
Clickable:

[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1pBe1R-GBHUju0bbG4mnAdEVN8dJ...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1pBe1R-GBHUju0bbG4mnAdEVN8dJIjZHQvhQ_ZMCKexY/viewform?usp=send_form)

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some_furry
Every time I tried to license a project under GPL (e.g. my FurBB project), I
received backlash from the community. I've therefore been using WTFPL
licensing for everything.

