
GPL, copyleft use declining faster than ever - mkup
http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/233753/gpl-copyleft-use-declining-faster-ever
======
cpnks
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.

~~~
there
_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.

~~~
davidw
> 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.

~~~
muyuu
> Sun Microsystems?

\+ Apple

They contribute back only whatever they see fit, and that's in perfect
accordance with the licence.

~~~
X-Istence
Apple's kernel/userland A.K.A Darwin is available from Apple's open source
website.

Apple has also contributed a lot that they weren't required to contribute.
Sure they are an example, but they are not nearly as cut throat as people like
to make them out to be. Look for Apple.com on commits to the FreeBSD source
tree...

------
mattbriggs
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.

~~~
npsimons
_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.

~~~
mattbriggs
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.

~~~
hammersend
I realize this website penalizes people for pointing out the obvious but I
have to ask you, did you even read what you responded to because what you
wrote has absolutely nothing to do with the question the GP asked. Getting
your talking points in is one thing but at least try to put it in context.

~~~
mattbriggs
>>>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. > (me talking about how the requirement to distribute
their source code will make companies not contribute to opensource)

how is that out of context?

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

~~~
Silhouette
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.)

~~~
icebraining
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.

~~~
Silhouette
That may all be true, but we used to get by on the most basic and plain
English of agreements and a healthy dose of common sense, all of which is just
as valid in court.

The world is not a better place because ordinary people with no legal training
and better things to do with their time are subject to multi-page formal
agreements, which most of them have never actually read, never mind
understood. I don't care whether it's a software licence agreement or the
terms for a network service, it's still the same basic problem.

~~~
icebraining
_we used to get by on the most basic and plain English of agreements and a
healthy dose of common sense, all of which is just as valid in court._

Yes, but who's "we"? Did that include the thousands of business that nowadays
use and contribute to OSS and also have lawyers to worry about those things?

 _The world is not a better place because ordinary people with no legal
training and better things to do with their time are subject to multi-page
formal agreements, which most of them have never actually read, never mind
understood._

But it was copyright that created that, by prohibiting any redistribution and
derivation by default. FOSS licenses are a way to counter-act that and give
you rights.

And while the GPL is not as short as we would like, the reality is that it
created a standard; you just have to read it once to know the license of more
than 50% of the FOSS projects out there. That seems a time saver, not killer.

~~~
Silhouette
_Did that include the thousands of business that nowadays use and contribute
to OSS and also have lawyers to worry about those things?_

You know it didn't. But I don't really see how that's relevant to my point. If
it takes several pages of legalese to define what "freedom" you are giving
someone, you might want to consider whether you're using the right word for
what you're doing.

 _But it was copyright that created that, by prohibiting any redistribution
and derivation by default._

No, it wasn't. It was bad lawyers who can't write plain English, and picky
people at the FSF who tried to fine-tune everything instead of stating a clear
guiding principle.

There are plenty of other licences that are very much shorter.

 _And while the GPL is not as short as we would like, the reality is that it
created a standard; you just have to read it once to know the license of more
than 50% of the FOSS projects out there. That seems a time saver, not killer._

Sorry, but that's just wishful thinking.

Firstly, I suspect that a lot of people use the GPL not because they like or
understand it but because it was the peer pressure "what you do" option for a
while. Those kids used to just give their code away as freeware and no-one was
any worse off for it.

Secondly, it's not really a standard when there are at least three styles of
GPL licence that come up reasonably often in discussions (GPL, LGPL, AGPL) and
then there's the whole v2/v3 mess as well. In fact, this kind of fragmentation
is probably a large part of why we're having this whole discussion on HN
today.

Finally, while I respect the goal of trying to have some standardised
licensing, the only standard I've observed in practice is that, unless you're
working in an organsation where everyone values GPL-style licensing and uses
it as an integral part of your business model, the lawyers and managers are
likely to blanket ban any use of GPL'd code because the risk of the viral
contamination effect is too high to justify any benefit from using it.

On the other hand, it's easy and feels safe to reuse code that comes with a
no-nonsense BSD/MIT style licence that says in plain English that you can use
the code without understanding several pages of legalese with subtle
implications. _That_ saves time.

~~~
icebraining
_No, it wasn't. It was bad lawyers who can't write plain English, and picky
people at the FSF who tried to fine-tune everything instead of stating a clear
guiding principle.

There are plenty of other licences that are very much shorter._

Well, unlike permissive licenses, the GPL is an hack on the copyright system;
they probably wanted to make sure it would hold up in court.

But the GPL isn't really that long; the 2.0 is only 340 lines of 80
characters. Yeah, it's long compared to MIT, but it's still a fraction of most
legal documents.

 _Firstly, I suspect that a lot of people use the GPL not because they like or
understand it but because it was the peer pressure "what you do" option for a
while. Those kids used to just give their code away as freeware and no-one was
any worse off for it._

"Freeware" doesn't include the right to modify and re-distribute. Yes, we were
certainly worse off for it. If you mean Freeware as a different concept, well,
then it's easy to see why licenses are useful - they clearly define that
stuff, so you can sleep at night knowing your business or webapp or whatever
won't get sued to the ground tomorrow.

 _Secondly, it's not really a standard when there are at least three styles of
GPL licence that come up reasonably often in discussions (GPL, LGPL, AGPL) and
then there's the whole v2/v3 mess as well._

The differences between the three versions are minimal - a clause or two more,
nothing else.

The v2 vs v3 issue is problematic, I agree. On the other hand, protection
against software patents is important. MIT, for example, provides none.

It seems irrelevant 'till you get hit by a patent troll, like startups are
already getting hit.

 _Finally, while I respect the goal of trying to have some standardised
licensing, the only standard I've observed in practice is that, unless you're
working in an organsation where everyone values GPL-style licensing and uses
it as an integral part of your business model, the lawyers and managers are
likely to blanket ban any use of GPL'd code because the risk of the viral
contamination effect is too high to justify any benefit from using it._

True. But unlicensed or implied licensing is dangerous too - you need _some_
kind of legalese.

 _On the other hand, it's easy and feels safe to reuse code that comes with a
no-nonsense BSD/MIT style licence that says in plain English that you can use
the code without understanding several pages of legalese with subtle
implications. That saves time._

Wait till you base your company on someone else's MIT licensed code and then
get hit by a patent lawsuit from them or a troll with their patents. Safe? I
don't think so.

~~~
Silhouette
_But the GPL isn't really that long; the 2.0 is only 340 lines of 80
characters._

Is that all?!

Out of curiosity, what proportion of people who choose to licence their own
code under the GPL do you think have actually read all of that and consulted a
lawyer to make sure they understood the terms they were themselves proposing?
I'm not even considering the equivalent question for the wider population of
users and downstream developers affected by the licence terms yet.

 _"Freeware" doesn't include the right to modify and re-distribute. Yes, we
were certainly worse off for it._

In what way? We didn't worry about offering others formal _rights_ in those
days. People shared source code if they thought they had something worth
sharing, without making a big deal about it. Such code frequenty came with
comments to the effect that you could use it however you liked but please give
credit, or words to that general effect, which would have just as much
validity in court as a modern MIT or BSD licence for example.

 _The differences between the three versions [GPL, LGPL, AGPL] are minimal - a
clause or two more, nothing else._

Wow. That's a mighty bold claim, and one I don't think a lot of software
developers would agree with. The changes in wording may only be a small part
of a vast document, but the implications are profound.

 _It seems irrelevant 'till you get hit by a patent troll, like startups are
already getting hit._

The correct solution to patent trolls is not to allow things like software
patents in the first place. It's a controversial subject and there is far from
consensus internationally or even within some national governments on whether
software should be patentable at all.

In any case, I think you are imagining a legal shield that is not there.
Patent trolls typically don't contribute to a FOSS project and then go after
other people who use it. In fact, patent trolls typically don't contribute
much of anything to any project, which is one of the reasons they are... not
well thought of. If you're using someone else's code and you don't have some
solid legal agreement that they indemnify you fully against all the related IP
threats, you're not safe, and no FOSS licence provides such indemnification;
many explicitly state precisely the opposite.

For that matter, you don't have any real protection in a troll-friendly legal
system even if you never use anyone else's code at all and you write every
line yourself. I don't think there's much argument in favour of GPL-esque
legalese to be found here. My personal view is that some of the GPLv3 stuff is
basically the FSF trying to conflate two unrelated IP issues and leverage the
viral nature of the GPL to advance other parts of their agenda. Which is a
pretty scummy thing to do, actually.

~~~
icebraining
_Out of curiosity, what proportion of people who choose to licence their own
code under the GPL do you think have actually read all of that and consulted a
lawyer to make sure they understood the terms they were themselves proposing?_

Not many, but I'd guess they didn't read MIT nor BSD either.

By the way, the original BSD licenses forced you to acknowledge the upstream
project in any advertising materials for yours. How many people read _that_?
Not many, I would guess.

 _In what way? We didn't worry about offering others formal rights in those
days. People shared source code if they thought they had something worth
sharing, without making a big deal about it._

As I said, that's fine in a community of hobbyists, not if we want businesses
contributing. But that's a different issue.

 _which would have just as much validity in court as a modern MIT or BSD
licence for example._

Do you have any example of a lawsuit where such freeform license was valid?

Besides, even if it was, I doubt people had enough trust in that to release
commercial stuff based on it.

 _Wow. That's a mighty bold claim, and one I don't think a lot of software
developers would agree with. The changes in wording may only be a small part
of a vast document, but the implications are profound._

I was talking about the license text, not the implications.

 _The correct solution to patent trolls is not to allow things like software
patents in the first place. It's a controversial subject and there is far from
consensus internationally or even within some national governments on whether
software should be patentable at all._

I'm sure the FSF would've ended software patents if they could, but it's
hardly fair to criticize them for not doing so. They did what they could:
route around them.

I would think the patent grant protects in the case the upstream developer
sells those patents to a troll after you're already using the code, but I'm
certainly not sure.

 _My personal view is that some of the GPLv3 stuff is basically the FSF trying
to conflate two unrelated IP issues and leverage the viral nature of the GPL
to advance other parts of their agenda. Which is a pretty scummy thing to do,
actually._

This talk about the GPL being "viral" is just FUD. If the GPL "infected" your
project if because you made the voluntary decision of including GPL-licensed
code in it.

And why is it scummy? They provide a tool (the GPL) to whoever wants to use
it. Advancing the Free Software Movement is obviously one of the goals of the
tool, like mostly anything the FSF does.

------
pron
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.

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

------
npsimons
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
Am I missing something? Where is the data?

------
iamgilesbowkett
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.

~~~
gillianseed
>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.

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

~~~
zobzu
"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.

~~~
CJefferson
"Public domain" is an unclear concept, I am under the impression that in many
countries there is no such thing as "public domain" from a strict legal
perspective. BSD is (for me) the closest thing to a clear legal "public
domain", and that is why I use it.

Also, the GPL is incompatible with the iOS store, which is a serious problem
for many people.

~~~
cygx
This is correct. For example, German law is based on the concept of
'Urheberrecht', ie 'creator's rights', instead of 'copyright'.

This is the reason why copyright notices (which were mandatory in the US until
1989 according to Wikipedia) were never necessary in Germany and why there's
no direct equivalent to public domain:

As soon as you create something worthwhile, you gain creator's rights, and as
you remain the creator no matter what you do or what usage rights you grant to
others, you can't give them away completely. There's a somewhat recent, rather
embarrassing quote by German politician and lawyer Volker Kauder, who claimed
to have acquired _creator's rights_ to some images he used on his homepage
without having the appropriate _usage rights_.

Anyway, you need an explicit license like
<http://pdclib.rootdirectory.de/wiki/License> or
<http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/> if you're German and want
to add code to the 'public domain'.

