The GPL version 2 has been in decline for some time, and has just dipped below a 50 percent adoption rate among open-source projects, according to new data released by Black Duck Software.
While some of this decline may be due to GPL version 3's increased adoption, at least some may derive from growing commercial interest in Apache-style licensing.
GPLv2 adoption falls below 50 percent
(Credit: Black Duck Software)One of the best indications of this shift is Red Hat's decision to license the JBoss HornetQ project under an Apache license, rather than the Lesser General Public License, to which it had previously defaulted.
Having said that, it's important to note that Apache's share of the market hasn't been growing dramatically (see the July 2009 data), which lends further weight to a hypothesis that GPLv3 is cannibalizing GPLv2. Even so, I find the dip interesting, and anecdotally I'm seeing a groundswell of support for Apache.
This isn't to suggest that the GPL doesn't matter: it clearly does. As Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady recently noted, "the GPLv2 is more popular than all of the other licenses on the (Black Duck) list...combined."
But as Open Core becomes the default business model for "pure-play" open-source companies, we will see more software licensed under the Apache license.
The GPL makes sense in a world where vendors hope to exercise control over their communities (by constraining the sorts of derivative works that remain palatable to would-be competitors or "free-riding" users), but if the desire is to foster unfettered growth, Apache licensing offers a better path.
I don't see an end to GPL adoption anytime soon, as its ethos appeals to a certain class of developer and because it can offer tangible development and business benefits, as I'll be arguing at Monday's "Which open-source license is best?" discussion with the Free and Open Source Software Learning Centre. The whole Apache vs. GPL debate may be much like Coke vs. Pepsi: a matter of personal preference and nothing more.
With GPLv2 adoption dropping below 50 percent of open-source projects surveyed by Black Duck Software, however, it's very possible that preferences are starting to shift in favor of Apache licensing.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
(Credit:
Paul Ford)
There's no doubt Google is a vast power on the Internet, but because the company uses its own software to host Web sites, it's possible to see just how powerful.
Specifically, Google operates about 10.5 million Web sites in October, a 411,000 increase from September, according to statistics released Thursday by Netcraft, which monitors what software is used to host Web sites.
The figure comes from monitoring what Web server software is in use to deliver Web pages to people's browsers. The top two packages are Apache and Microsoft's Internet Information Services, but Google has been catching up since.
Netcraft found 182 million Web sites total, of which 10.5 million used Google's software. Apache ran 91.5 million of htem, and Microsoft's IIS ran 62.8 million.
That gives Google about 5.7 percent share, according to NetCraft. But the fraction rises higher to 10.6 percent when measuring "active" sites, which screens out a lot of domains that just have a token Web pages with no real content.
Google's own Web server software is gaining popularity compared to the top software products, Apache and Microsoft's Internet Information Services.
(Credit: Netcraft)Google doesn't talk much about its internal systems, but said in a statement, "The Google Web server is a custom-built server that runs on Linux."
Google's sites include several with a profusion of user-generated content such as Blogger for hosting blogs.
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Microsoft, one of the biggest rivals to open-source programming, has begun funding the Apache Software Foundation, one of open-source software's biggest supporters.
"Microsoft is becoming a sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation. This sponsorship will enable the ASF to pay administrators and other support staff so that ASF developers can focus on writing great software," said Sam Ramji, a senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft. He announced the move Friday in a speech at the Open Source Convention, and noted Microsoft's support of Apache on the software company's Port 25 blog as well.
Apache still leads Microsoft for Web server software market share. But the Apache Software Foundation has many more projects than just that early leader.
(Credit: NetCraft)Obviously you might think this an opportune moment to cue up the soundtracks of record needles screeching and cars crashing into each other. But hold your horses.
For one thing, some within Microsoft have for years been making various encouraging words about open-source software, even though others have engaged in serious trash-talking. The company has no apparent desire to let the programming world have its way with Windows, as is possible with Linux, but Microsoft has been trying to make nice in some circles.
Playing nice with open source
For example, Microsoft has released its own open-source licenses and has put some technology under its Open Specification Promise, which lets open-source programmers use it. Also on Friday, Ramji said that policy makes it clear the promise applies to commercial uses of the technology, too.
Another example: Microsoft has been working closely with Zend for Windows support of PHP, an open-source project that lets servers create Web pages on the fly.
PHP is often used in conjunction with other open-source components: Linux, the Apache Web server software that's used to dish up Web pages, and the MySQL database that's used to store the data used to build Web pages elements such as online catalog pages or online forum postings. In fact, the four are used often enough that there's an acronym for it: LAMP.
But there's also the idea of WISP, which substitutes many of Microsoft's own components: Windows, Internet Information Services for a Web server, and SQL Server for the database. On Friday, Microsoft released a patch to ADOdb, a package PHP uses to access databases. The patch lets PHP use SQL Server.
In other words, some parts of Microsoft are learning how to play nice with some parts of the open-source world.
Apache's liberal license
Second is the Apache License that governs the foundation's projects. Many of Microsoft's attacks on open-source software were aimed at the General Public License, which has a reciprocity provision: If you make a change to a GPL project, then distribute software employing that change, you must share the change under the GPL.
The Apache License, though, lets programmers take software and combine it with proprietary software in any way, with no obligation to share. That's how IBM, for example, uses the Apache Web server software in its proprietary WebSphere product.
For Microsoft, that means Apache's projects can be used within Microsoft. And there are some that could be of interest.
Apache: Useful projects
Third is what the Apache Software Foundation is up to.
When it began, Apache didn't have too many projects under its umbrella besides the HTTP Web server that has surpassed Microsoft's competing products in market share since at least 1995, according to Netcraft's Web server survey.
Now Apache has dozens of projects.
Here's one that Microsoft, given its so-far fruitless efforts to catch up to Google in search, might enjoy: Hadoop, an open-source version of Google's MapReduce algorithm that's instrumental to processing huge data sets. Yahoo contributes to Hadoop and uses it in its own operations.
There's nothing stopping Microsoft from using Hadoop or any other Apache project without funding Apache, but sponsorship makes some sense for political and practical reasons.
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