IP: 80 percent of open source is GPL, no way

[David Farber <dfarber@earthlink.net>]

This is the last one on this. Dave is well known. 

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: "Dave Winer" <dave@userland.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 08:52:12 
To: <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: 80 percent of open source is GPL, no way

Dave, this debate is flailing. I don't work for Microsoft and I am not Brett
Glass, but I don't like the GPL.

Also I would like to know where the 80 percent number came from. I don't
believe it.

"Roughly 80% of all Open Source software is covered by the GPL."

Here's a rebuttal to that. Apache, Perl and Python are not licensed under
the GPL.

Each has a far more liberal license, placing no restrictions on the use of
the code. You can use them in commercial products, or open source products,
or whatever other kinds of products you can envision.

These are truly free licenses. Stallman et al have co-opted the term
"free" -- too bad, because the scripting and HTTP open source projects have
a more inclusive idea of freedom.

Dave





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