GPL declines as open source moves to the Web
The GNU General Public License (GPL) used to dominate open-source licensing, but its hold appears to be slipping according to new research from Black Duck Software. While GPLv3 has seen a 400-percent increase in adoption, and though the GPL and its variants still claim over 65 percent of all open-source projects, Black Duck reports a 5 percent decline in GPL adoption.
This drop makes sense, given the GPL's decreasing relevance to the modern world of network-delivered software and the increasing value of data over software.
ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn points out that there are no clear replacements arising for the GPL, and he's right. But I'm not sure that's the point.
Peter Vescuso, executive vice president of marketing and business development at Black Duck Software, argues that we're starting to see greater diversity in licensing approaches, as "many developers are selecting licenses that are less restrictive, a move that underscores the broader adoption and value of open source in today's multisource development environments."
Perhaps. Or perhaps developers simply don't care that much about open-source licensing qua licensing very much any more. The real value in open-source software is no longer the software, but rather the resultant services that are delivered over the Web, a theme that Tim O'Reilly has been hitting consistently over the past six years.
The GPL was highly relevant in the Software 1.0 world because it was a great way to protect software assets. In effect, the GPL became the preferred way to replicate the copyright regime, except under the banner of free software.
Today, the GPL (and open-source licensing, generally) is irrelevant.
It's irrelevant because the GPL protects nothing in a world where software is delivered over the Web, because the GPL's "distribution clause" isn't triggered. The GPL becomes BSD/Apache, in short.
Because of this, Web developers long ago stopped worrying about open-source license requirements and instead are focused on data-driven lock-in. Open-source software becomes a way to build free services that encourage adoption, which adoption yields valuable data. That data is the crown jewels in a networked world, as O'Reilly suggests.
Because Web developers don't necessarily need to protect their software, we're seeing more adopt licenses like BSD, Apache, and other permissive licenses in order to foster community, rather than protection, around their software. Those who persist in seeing the world through the Software 1.0 lens continue to try to protect the software, which is why we're seeing a four-fold increase in AGPLv3 adoption. (AGPLv3 extends the definition of "distribution" to include network-based delivery of software.)
The GPL isn't dead, and perhaps it's not even dying. But that isn't the point. The point is that the real question is Web-based delivery of software, and current licensing has almost nothing to say on that topic.
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Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there hasn't been any solid research on open source that distinguishes between serious apps and hobbyist projects, partly because its really hard to do such a study. So, at least for now, we just have to take these numbers with a grain of salt.
If I used the BSD license, nobody would have any reason to buy a commercial license at all. Then I'd be more likely to be on welfare.
MySQL sold their business for a Billion using this licensing scheme. Too bad that Sun ran it into the ground immediately after the purchase. The founders took home over 200 Million each.
As for being on welfare, the whole idea in FOSS is that you distribute the software under a FOSS license, and then make your money on customization and integration (instead of charging for licenses).
Check out http://www.squidoo.com/software_ip_management for more information on this topic.
I personally want to see more cloud applications move to a structure similar to Drupal. I desperately want to be able to download Google Docs and put it on my home server. I would use it a great deal more that way, because I would know that if Google did something with the software that someone else could fork it, or that I could go in a hack around with the code.
So many of the freedoms associated with free software are lost in this situation. "Access to your data" which are the crown jewels you speak of means nothing if the only program to utilize the data is the one you are paying for. This is a mirror of the same vendor lock in we had with Microsoft.
What do you think about it ?
Will (real) free software die without licenses like the GNU Affero GPLv3 ?
http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss
Peter Vescuso
It appears that not only do you not understand linux and software development, you don't have the first clue about licensing either.
Just because your company abuses the spirit of OSS, doesn't mean everyone does.
- by jgodse July 6, 2009 9:27 PM PDT
- This was a great article! One consequence of web applications effectively turning GPL into Apache (for web applications only) is that it gives public web applications a huge advantage over other types of FOSS applications because since web application hosts do not have to distribute any changes they make to FOSS software of any of the common FOSS licenses (except AGPL), they can pick from a much wider variety of software as their starting point. For example, if you are a company that is building a proprietary CRM system using a database, a web-hosted CRM solution can use MySQL (GPL license) or PostgreSQL (BSD license, I believe). A company that builds the same kind of proprietary application can only use PostgreSQL (BSD) and not use MySQL because using MySQL (under the GPL) will force them to distribute their application source code as well. In fact, using PostgreSQL in a web application frees you to distribute it to, say, and enterprise customer that demands that the database be resident on its premises, without distributing your proprietary code.
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(16 Comments)Using AGPL is a great way to adhere to the software freedom philosophies of Richard Stallman. However, remember that Linux didn't take off in popularity until companies found ways to connect their proprietary software to Linux without triggering the distribution clause.
http://www.squidoo.com/software_ip_management has more information on this topic.