tomhudson's Journal: Is the GPL running out of steam?

The number of projects released under permissive licenses (Apache, MIT, BSD) continues to ries, and the popularity of the GPL continues to drop.

Whatâ(TM)s clear is that over the last few years, many of the highest profile open source projects have chosen the Apache license, including âoecloud computingâ platforms such as Hadoop, OpenStack, Cassandra, and CloudFoundry. Node.js, another of-the-moment cloud platform, uses the MIT License. And even the big-name mobile platforms have joined the crowd. Googleâ(TM)s Android mobile OS used the Apache license, and just this week, HP announced its schedule for open sourcing Palmâ(TM)s webOS platform under the Apache. (license)

People are finally figuring out what the folks behind the *BSDs always knew - that code contributions will still make it back, because there's value in not having to support a custom fork all by yourself. Not to mention that it's also better when you get people to give back because they want to, and not because they have to.

choice vs. force

[Bill Dog]

The philosophy behind the permissive licenses is primarily to try to build something, while that behind the copyleft licenses is primarily to try to destroy something. So it's no wonder.

GPL

[Tet]

You're wrong. Code isn't always submitted back to the project. I can point to several examples of this. Hell, in many cases, code isn't even forthcoming where it's covered by the GPL and there is a legal obligation to do so. Your irrational hatred of the GPL seems to be blinding you to the facts here.