[OT] Use of the GPL under fast decline

[Pedro Giffuni <pf...@apache.org>]

JIC you missed it in Slashdot:

http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/233753/gpl-copyleft-use-declining-faster-ever

Quoting the article:
...
"I don't think projects are moving away from GPL, but that new vendors are choosing community approaches enabled by permissive licenses, rather than attempting to control projects using the GPL," he replied.
____

Sounds familiar? ;).

Now IMHO, part of the issue is Free Software advocates tried
to sell the GPL into big companies as a way to bring in cheap
development and still gain something from the licensing. This
model was broken by the community forking and the difficulty
of generating revenue from free software. Apparently companies
are not falling for it anymore.

The article also mentions the effect of the GPL3: I can say
that in FreeBSD we took the rather brave decision of avoiding
the GPL3 in the base system, which means we are stuck with gcc
4.2.1 and binutils 2.17. This was done mainly due to concerns
from embedded developers. Fortunately Apple took the same
decision and clang has come to the rescue so FreeBSD 10 is
expected to be GPL-free.

regards,

Pedro.