Conversions to GPLv3 from version 2 moving slowly
Palamida has been tracking the movement of open-source projects from GPLv2 to GPLv3 and estimates that 119 projects have converted (to GPL/LGPLv3), which represents less than 1 percent of projects using the General Public License, or GPL. Nothing to write home about, in other words.
Why is the uptake so tepid? Well, the rampant FUD around version 3 probably helped, but I don't think that's the main issue. I actually think the primary problem is that GPLv3 didn't go far enough, in many ways. It's an updated version of GPLv2, which is good, but it doesn't resolve some of the industry's most pressing issues, like the ASP loophole.
Instead, it tackles DRM (digital rights management), TiVo and other such issues that are salient to the Free Software Foundation but not so much to most of us.
Still, it's a good license, and I think the adoption will continue and accelerate as people grok it better. I particularly think that it will find adherents in companies and communities that have used quasi-open-source licenses. It allows for reasonable attribution, for one thing, which may serve to obviate the whole debate over Mozilla Public License (MPL) plus attribution.
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. 
Just in case you missed it - Samba have announced the next release will be GPLv3. http://news.samba.org/announcements/samba_gplv3/
Because of Samba's omnipresence this should pull quite a few apps that use their libraries into the new license. And, probably, give Novell/M$ the big headache we've been anticipating.
Cheers
Al
I didn't think his answer that Google will give back more of its OSS modifications or else the "community will get mad and give them the evil eye" (my words not Eben's) was a good argument.
Will be interesting to see how this plays out...
- Alfresco going to switch to GPLv3?
- by tristanbob July 10, 2007 7:21 AM PDT
- Thanks for keeping us updated on this. I was wondering how the adoption was going. I think we need to give it some time, projects may not want to switch until the next major release comes out. The real evaluation of GPLv3 should be 6-12 months from now.
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