Re: The sad decline of copyleft software licenses? :(

[Jean Louis]

* Pen-Yuan Hsing <penyuanhsing@gmail.com> [2020-09-25 04:08]:
> I'm afraid I have to agree with Marinus on this point.
> 
> Interesting idea to `grep` the licenses on a Debian VPS system, but I think
> they represent a particular subset of software, many of which have been core
> components of GNU/Linux for a long time, when copyleft licenses likely had a
> larger following. Like Marinus said, and to the best of my knowledge, a big
> majority of new software published on platforms such as GitLab or GitHub
> uses permissive licenses with MIT being one of the most popular. I
> distinctly remember a graph published, probably by GitHub, or the proportion
> of different licenses used and the graph shows this trend. (sorry I can't
> find the original graph right now)
> 
> Also, of the GNU/Linux distributions, Debian (while not 100% free software
> according to the FSF) is a relatively strong advocate of software freedom,
> and more likely to include more GPL'ed/copyleft-licensed software.

Maybe it is this one:
https://github.blog/2015-03-09-open-source-license-usage-on-github-com/

Then there is this helpful website:
https://choosealicense.com/

Their wordings for the MIT license is:

"The MIT License is short and to the point. It lets people do almost
anything they want with your project, like making and distributing
closed source versions."

Their wording is not quite nice, as making and distributing "closed
source" or binary versions is allowed with GPL, what is not allowed is
disallowing the user to receive the source code.

Obviously they, Github, do not mind much really about free software,
important is that they sell their Github services to those larger
companies. The free git hosting is there to attract those others who
are paying for service.

Instead of thinking that MIT is competition for GPL, simply count how
many new software is published under GPL, yesterday I have noticed
that this game is under GPLv3:
https://frictionalgames.com/2020-09-amnesia-is-now-open-source/

So isn't that great news?

Instead of looking at MIT licensed software as competitor's product,
look at it as a friendly and free software product, as the MIT license
is free software license, appreciate it for free software production
and push the idea and implementation of more GPL software.

Jean