GPLv3 picks up traction

. . . keeping an eye on the penguin

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Aug. 01, 2007

For all that a great deal of attention was given to the arrival of the GPLv3 (Gnu General Public License, version 3), few software developers announced plans to move their programs to this new license. Now, open-source programmers are beginning to give the new license a try.

When the GPLv3 first arrived, only a handful of programs made the shift. The most significant of these was Samba making good its promise to move its popular Windows-compatible file/print server program to the GPLv3.

Since then, according to data collected by Palamida, an IP (intellectual property) management company, the GPLv3 is picking up steam. By July 31, Palamida found that 277 open-source projects had moved to using the GPLv3. At the beginning of the month, only 82 projects, most of them created by the Free Software Foundation, which created the GPLv3, had made the switch.

Since then, out of the 3,205 projects licensed under GPLv2 or later, about 8 percent of them have moved to the GPLv3. Not all the new GPLv3 programs, however, are coming from the ranks of already GPLed programs.

In an interesting move, SugarCRM announced that it would be licensing the next version of Sugar Community Edition under the GPLv3. What makes this move surprising is that SugarCRM, like other companies such as Socialtext, Scalix, and Zimbra had been working on creating their own derivatives of the MPL (Mozilla Public License).

These licenses require developers to use badgeware, a prominent display of the licensing company's chosen logo, if they use the code. In SugarCRM's case, that was a "Powered by SugarCRM" logo that must be at least 106 x 23 pixels in size. This, in turn, had to link to the SugarCRM open source Web site. Now, SugarCRM has seemingly left this approach behind.

Ironically, the OSI (Open Source Initiative) has just approved a badgeware style license for the first time. On July 25, the OSI gave its blessing to Socialtext’s GAP (General Attribution Provision) to the MPL.

While badgeware has finally made it into an official open-source license, the more important news seems to be that the GPLv3 is finally gathering some momentum.

—Steven J. Vaughan Nichols

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