The GPL v3 Watch List is intended to give you a snapshot of the GPLv3/LGPLv3 adoption for May 2nd through May 16th, 2008.
This day in 1822, the Turks defeated the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence.
For those of you who track our numbers carefully, you will have noticed the large jump in projects over the last couple days. That was partly from the completion of the changes as well as from inputting two weeks of data. We missed last weeks post due to the maintenance.
As of today, May 16th, our count for the GPL v3 is at 2371 GPL v3 projects. Since our last post, this is 160 new GPL v3 projects, which is the cumulation of over 2 weeks of projects. This matches with our estimate of approximately 50 projects per week. The AGPL v3 is still growing and is at 86 AGPL v3 projects, soon to hit 100 projects. And the LGPL v3 count is now at 219 LGPL v3 projects, up 19 projects since our last posting.
This Week:
New project conversions this week include:
“Cloud services” such as online storage and computing resources have become a popular topic recently, with major players like Microsoft, Google and Amazon offering the use of fractions of their respective server farms to users. Amazon’s Web Services ( http://www.amazon.com/webservic
A small sub-industry is developing around making developer-oriented resources like Amazon’s available to consumers. Developers of products such as JungleDisk ( http://jungledisk.com/ ) an online backup and storage application, and DropBox ( currently in beta, http://www.getdropbox.com/ ), a content sharing and collaboration tool, write consumer-friendly front-ends to interface with Amazon’s underlying cloud infrastructure.
Consumer-oriented storage services are also available. Microsoft’s SkyDrive ( http://skydrive.live.com/ ), Microsoft’s Live Mesh (coming soon – http://mesh.com/), AOL’s Xdrive ( http://www.xdrive.com/ ) and Yahoo’s Briefcase ( http://briefcase.yahoo.com/ ) are four examples from major players. These services are free, though storage space is limited (SkyDrive – 5GB, Live Mesh – 5GB, Xdrive – 5GB, Briefcase – 30MB) and allow users to upload files directly to the service, almost as if the service were an additional hard drive available to the user.
It will be interesting to see to what extent users and developers are willing to allow a third party store and manage their data and computing processes. One huge benefit to doing so is that users and developers have access to virtually unlimited computing and storage resources, available on-demand, which is paid for as it is used. No need to invest in your own server farm. It is unclear at this point whether any FOSS licensing issues will arise as a result of a user’s local application interfacing with a cloud-based computing resource. For pure storage-type applications there doesn’t appear to be any potential for FOSS licensing conflicts, but it is possible that a cloud-based infrastructure resource that plays a significant role in a tightly integrated computing process including local computing resources may warrant consideration of such licensing issues.
-Kevin Howard
http://blog.jungledisk.com
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan
In July of last year, I posted an explanation of the reason that we give such significance to the “or later” option associated to the use of a GPL license. http://gpl3.blogspot.com/2007
While I always want to believe that developers use our research and analysis of FOSS licensing, this is an example that was posted on the site. The biggest issue here is not that JasperReports is available under LGPLv3. the problem is that OSS licensing can be so complex that thinly staffed and over-worked development teams can unintentionally overlook how a license is implemented, the results of which can have unexpected implications.
As of this week, there are 6739 projects with releases licensed under GPL “or later”. While I am sure that a number of these are representative of the support and solidarity that many developers have for FSF and GNU licenses, there may be a large number that are accidentally released under the latest GPL, at the user’s choice.
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Verified against version 2.0.5 on 5/16/08.
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This is from the LGPL v2.1, found at http://www.gnu.org/licenses
Note the specific language from section Titled “TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION”, section 0 , which reads . . .
“Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. ”
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Taken from a comment posted on http://gpl3.blogspot.com/2008
Nick Halsey said…
A quick correction – JasperSoft has not yet adopted v3 of either the GPL or LGPL, though we are currently studying this option. Currently we license JasperReports under LGPL v2, and the rest of the JasperSoft Business Intelligence Suite under GPL v2.
April 23, 2008 7:36 PM
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After reviewing the information above, in this example, JasperReports version 2.0.5, licenses to a user to distribute and modify under the specific terms and conditions of the “GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
question: Is JasperReports release version 2.0.5 available under the terms and conditions of the LGPL v3?
Thanks for the Continued Support and Contributions
Our database is partly maintained by our team of researchers as well by the contributions that are received from the community. Here is a submission we received last week through email:
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Métamorphose
“Hello,
….ust wanted to let you know my program is now on gpl3 since the last release earlier this year. The newer alpha version is also on v3.
cheers
We appreciate all the contributions that have been made, either through our form on our web page or by email, and we also like to hear why you are changing your project’s license as in the email above. It gives us more insight into which direction license trends are moving. We will continue to post up user contributions to our blog each week, and we may quote parts of your emails. If you wish the email to remain private, just mention so and we will not disclose any part of it.
Much Appreciated,
Palamida R&D Group
Notable Mention
Palamida actively takes submissions from visitors on updates on new GPL v3/LGPL 3 projects. We are amazed at the number of submissions we have gotten to date, but even more so, we are incredibly grateful to the almost 100 core contributors who have devoted their time and resources at helping us provide up-to-date information.
The Research Group (rdgroup@palamida.com)
