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That was Linksys not Netgear. re: GPL/LGPL being the most successful software licenses, that seems to be changing in favour of permissive licenses like MIT/BSD

by huxley 12y ago

That was Linksys not Netgear. re: GPL/LGPL being the most successful software licenses, that seems to be changing in favour of permissive licenses like MIT/BSD/Apache Back in 2013, Aaron Williamson of the Software Freedom Law Center did an analysis of licenses used on Github. The MIT license outnumbered all variations of GPL + LGPL licenses combined, second to MIT on the list was BSD (of course, it should be mentioned that most repositories on Github lacked any identifiable license at all) http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2013/lcs-slides-aaronw/#/chart-gp-adj http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2013/lcs-slides-aar... Martin Thoma analyzed PyPi (Python Package Index) metadata in January and also found that no license was the top category, but where there is a license, MIT/BSD/Apache licenses outnumbered GPL/LGPL by quite a bit. http://martin-thoma.com/analyzing-pypi-metadata/#tocAnchor-1-3-4 http://martin-thoma.com/analyzing-pypi-metadata/#tocAnchor-1...

hetman 12y ago
That shouldn't be very surprising. I tend to licence small projects under MIT style licences because of the relatively small investment of effort. But if I was starting a much bigger project I would seriously consider something like GPL. It would be interesting to see how the use of licences scales with project size and longevity, rather than pure project count.
bcg1 12y ago
Richard Fontana analyzed Debian packages... guess what? Mostly GPL. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
- SEMW 12y ago
  It seems perfectly plausible that debian packages are mostly GPL while github is mostly MIT. (Eg Github first became popular in the ruby/rails community which tends to skew more MIT and corporate-friendly). I don't at all see the implication that the difference means someone's trying to lie with statistics.
  - belorn 12y ago
    The lies comes from people who uses the statistic to prove a change in society. The statistics is, as always, just data that is relevant in a specific context. As to why github is mostly MIT, a reason I read is that github replaced private cvs, ftp and folders on ones laptop with a web service that has the dual functionality of work platform and collaboration platform. It follow the same path when people moved away from using office programs and started to use google docs.
  - bcg1 12y ago
    Just to clarify, I wasn't trying to imply that anyone was lying.
- huxley 12y ago
  I don't think Richard Fontana did the analysis, in his 2012 presentation entitled "The decline of the GPL and what to do about it" [1], he does refer to an analysis of Debian packages but that was done by John Sullivan (which was prompted by and counter to two analyses showing GPL's decline which were done by Matthew Aslett) [1] "The decline of the GPL and what to do about it" https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_fontana.pdf https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs20...
  - bcg1 12y ago
    Cool thanks, you're right it was John Sullivan... should have looked it up before trusting my memory... I was thinking of his original talk: http://faif.us/cast/2012/feb/28/0x23/ http://faif.us/cast/2012/feb/28/0x23/

by huxley 12y ago

hetman 12y ago

That shouldn't be very surprising. I tend to licence small projects under MIT style licences because of the relatively small investment of effort. But if I was starting a much bigger project I would seriously consider something like GPL. It would be interesting to see how the use of licences scales with project size and longevity, rather than pure project count.

bcg1 12y ago

Richard Fontana analyzed Debian packages... guess what? Mostly GPL. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

SEMW 12y ago
It seems perfectly plausible that debian packages are mostly GPL while github is mostly MIT. (Eg Github first became popular in the ruby/rails community which tends to skew more MIT and corporate-friendly). I don't at all see the implication that the difference means someone's trying to lie with statistics.
- belorn 12y ago
  The lies comes from people who uses the statistic to prove a change in society. The statistics is, as always, just data that is relevant in a specific context. As to why github is mostly MIT, a reason I read is that github replaced private cvs, ftp and folders on ones laptop with a web service that has the dual functionality of work platform and collaboration platform. It follow the same path when people moved away from using office programs and started to use google docs.
- bcg1 12y ago
  Just to clarify, I wasn't trying to imply that anyone was lying.
huxley 12y ago
I don't think Richard Fontana did the analysis, in his 2012 presentation entitled "The decline of the GPL and what to do about it" [1], he does refer to an analysis of Debian packages but that was done by John Sullivan (which was prompted by and counter to two analyses showing GPL's decline which were done by Matthew Aslett) [1] "The decline of the GPL and what to do about it" https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_fontana.pdf https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs20...
- bcg1 12y ago
  Cool thanks, you're right it was John Sullivan... should have looked it up before trusting my memory... I was thinking of his original talk: http://faif.us/cast/2012/feb/28/0x23/ http://faif.us/cast/2012/feb/28/0x23/