Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » GPLv3 shunned, survey says

September 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

GPLv3 shunned, survey says

TAGS: Open Source

Just 6 percent of developers working with open-source software have adopted the new GNU General Public License version 3, an Evans Data survey has found.

Also, two-thirds say they will not adopt GPLv3 anytime in the next year, and 43 percent say they will never implement the new license. Almost twice as many would be less likely to join a project that uses GPLv3 than would be likely to join, Evans said in a statement released on Monday.

"GPLv3 is controversial because it imposes restrictions on what you can do with programs implemented under this license," said John Andrews, president and CEO of Evans Data in the statement. "Developers are confused and divided about those restrictions, with fairly equal numbers agreeing with the restrictions, disagreeing with them, or thinking they will be unenforceable."

Evans also noted GPLv3 has a clause forbidding licensees from bringing patent infringement lawsuits, directly attacking the recent Novell-Microsoft alliance. Seventy percent of the developers in the survey felt the alliance has been bad for the open-source community, according to Evans.

GPLv3 was released by the Free Software Foundation on June 29. The foundation cited improvements like copyright technology to provide uniformity in different jurisdictions and the ability to modify software on PCs or in household appliances.

Other findings in the survey of more than 380 open-source developers included:

* Lack of skills in an organization was called the greatest barrier to migration from Windows to Linux.
* The Apache Foundation was cited as the organization having the best open-source offerings.
* A third of open-source developers are building desktop applications.

Posted by Paul Krill on September 24, 2007 04:30 PM

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