GPLv3 Celebrates Two Years, GPLv2 Still in Front
In June of 2007, after many months delay, the Free Software Software Foundation released GPLv3. Since that time, the license has been gaining an increased following, but without much threat to GPLv2 in first place.
Open source knowledge base provider Black Duck Software confirms in a study of most commonly used open source licenses that GNU General PUblic License (GPL) 3.0 is in fifth place overall, with a little over five percent usage.
Unchallenged in first place, with half of all licenses, is still its predecessor GPL 2.0 that reigned alone for 16 years. The Lesser PGL (LPGL) 2.1 is in second place with around 10%. Chances are it will take GPLv3 a few more years to move up the ranks, but has already positioned itself just after BSD 2.0 at six percent.
The adoption rate of GPLv3 in software and projects increased from the 90 initial licenses in 2007 to 3,725 in June, 2008, to 9,755 in June, 2009, according to Black Duck calculations.
Comments
comments powered by Disqus
Issue 41: Linux Shell Handbook 2021 Edition/Special Editions
Buy this issue as a PDF
News
-
KDE Launches the Qt 5 Patch Collection
To support and maintain a stable Qt 5 for KDE Gears and Frameworks, KDE will maintain a patch collection.
-
Linux Creator Warns Next Kernel Could be Delayed
Linus Torvalds has issued concern about the size of kernel 5.12 and possible delays for its release.
-
System76 Updates its Pangolin Laptop
System76 has released a much-anticipated AMD version of their most popular laptop, the Pangolin.
-
New Debian-Based Distribution Arrives on the Market
TelOS is a new Debian-based Linux distribution with a customized, touch-screen-ready KDE Plasma 5 desktop.
-
System76 Releases New Thelio Desktop
One of the most ardent supporters of open source hardware has released a new desktop machine for home or office.
-
Mageia 8 Now Available with Linux 5.10 LTS
The latest release of Mageia includes improved graphics support for both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.
-
GNOME 40 Beta has been Released
Anyone looking to test the beta for the upcoming GNOME 40 release can now do so.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 has Arrived
The latest stable version of OpenMandriva has been released and offers the newest KDE desktop and ARM support.
-
Thunderbird 78 Ported to Ubuntu 20.04
The Ubuntu developers have made the decision to port the latest release of Thunderbird to the LTS version of the platform.
-
Elementary OS is Bringing Multi-Touch Gestures to the OS
User-friendly Linux distribution, elementary OS, is working to make using the fan-favorite platform even better for laptops.
Re: Missing Data
Davide correctly points out an issue with the project descriptions on many sites, i.e., in mnay cases the project description refers to the wrong license. To correct this, Black Duck employs both people and analytical tools to review projects to determine the correct license, much as Davida did in his example. A better approach would be for OSS projects to employ more discipline in referencing the correct license.
Missing data
So all this are also GPL 3.0 compatible or can be converted into strict GPL 3.0 by anyone.
Sometime ago I have make some test and found that site like blackducksoftware do not consider a lot of tiny site like sourceforge but with few projects, also there are a lot of site with one single free software project that is not counted. I have found that there are project in sourceforge or similar site that are not considered with the real license they use. Also some project are counted more than once.
I make an example of this mistakes: I take the project "A set of linguistics tools" on sourceforge (http://linguistico.sf.net)
47 Dizionario cognomi italiani 03_01__2009_06_26 Affero General Public License 3.0
not correct it is AGPL >= 3.0
48 Dizionario italiano Mozilla 2_4_2007_09_01 GNU General Public License V3 or later
ok
49 Dizionario italiano per OOo 2_4_2007_09_01 GNU General Public License V3 or later
ok
But 48 and 49 are the same project packed into two different format
50 Strumenti Linguistici DicOOo OOo2-pack_01_07__2008_11_29 GNU General Public License V3 or later
ok
But 50 is 49 + 51 (AGPL) + hypenator (LGPL)
51 Thesaurus OOo 2.x.x 02_09_l_2008_11_29 GNU General Public License V3 or later
wrong it is AGPL >= 3.0
Also is missing a tool that let you extract wrong words from a text file and you can use some filter. I used it principally for finding Italian dictionary missing word, test heavy modification on Italian dictionary, ... but it can be used to check type mistake into a text in few seconds.
This project is released as AGPL >= 3.0
Davide