Hi People,
recently the question popped up about how many free software
is published under which license. We believe that the licenses of
the FSF, especially the GNU GPL is the most commonly used and
spreaded Free Software license.
Probably with BSD like licenses and Public domain coming next
(personal guess).
This is of course not just a matter of how many code lines are under
which license or the number of projects. It is also a matter of
importance. Nontheless I tried to collect some numbers I could grasp
easily, probably underrepresenting the BSD code out there.
Sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=13
OSI Approved (8964 projects)
Public Domain (242 projects)
Other/Proprietary License (216 projects)
(I don't know why they allow proprietory licenses....., I always
thought they did not, but obviously someone should inquire otherwise
the brand sourceforge for free software is damaged.)
Comment: OSI generally means that the license is also FSF approved.
(with some exceptions, like the Artistic license.)
From http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=14
Including PD from above:
GNU General Public License (GPL) :6634
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) : 895
BSD License : 513
Public Domain : 242
Mozilla Public License (MPL) : 154
MIT/X Consortium License : 120
Python License : 80
QT Public License (QPL) : 63
zlib/libpng License : 49
IBM Public License : 11
Ricoh Source Code Public License : 5
MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW) : 4
Artistic License (not free by FSF standards) : 307
Also LWN now publishes annoucement by license.
(I have bugged them about this for a long time. :) )
The annoucemente come from freshmeat for each week.
Unfortunalty I have not found an easy method to get the license distribution
of the freshmeat database. (I have send them mail and asked for it today.)
A small script could process the LWN annoucements starting with the
21.9.2000 when the annoucements were done by license the first time.
(lynx -dump is your friend.) Here are the results:
GPL:4615
LGPL: 376
BSD type: 317
OpenSource: 201
Public Domain: 86
Artistic & GPL: 66
Apache style: 65
MIT: 48
MPL: 44
QPL: 29
The PHP License: 22
IBM Public License: 10
unknown: 6
Eiffel Forum Freeware License: 6
NPL: 2
non-free licenses:
freely distributable: 228 *
Freeware: 169 *
free to use but restricted: 137 *
Artistic: 123 *
free for non-commercial use: 99 *
proprietary: 52 *
Free Trial: 45 *
source-available proprietary: 31 *
Shareware: 23 *
Voxel Public License: 3 *
Free World Licence: 1 *
AFPL: 1 *
Conclusion: Active and visible project on freshmeat and sourceforge
definately are dominated by the GNU GPL by an order of magnitute!
The LGPL seems to be second with unprotected free software types
BSD/MIT/PD being in the same league.
Therefore my thesis above is backed by some data.
And it makes sence, because LGPL and BSD/MIT/PD are useful licenses
for some special cases, when GPL protection inhibits other goals of
the project.
Cheers,
Bernhard
--
Professional Service around Free Software (intevation.net)
The FreeGIS Project (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org)
FSF Europe (fsfeurope.org)
Hi everyone!
It's been quiet for a while on these lists and I would like to take
the opportunity to inform you about the latest progress on behalf of
the FSF Europe team. The team currently consists of:
Frederic Couchet
Loic Dachary
Peter Gerwinski
Werner Koch
Bernhard Reiter
Alessandro Rubini
Jonas Öberg
and myself. These are the people you reach with team(a)fsfeurope.org.
We have registered a FSF Europe project on savannah, the GNU
sourceforge set up by Loic Dachary and others. You can get to the
support section with the following link
https://savannah.gnu.org/support/?group_id=53
We also added a canned response for people interested in helping. For
your information, here it is:
Hi!
We are very pleased to hear that you want to help the FSF
Europe. Every little bit helps promoting Free Software and its
philosophy.
Currently the core team is very busy organizing the legal steps
associated with setting up the FSF Europe (if you take a look at
the maling list archives you will see that this is not as easy as
we would prefer it to be).
We are very actively gathering information about the situation
of Free Software in every European country, however. Examples of
things we would like to hear about are: schedules of events
related to Free Software, the tendency and actions regarding
software patents, the names and coordinates of officials,
newspapers, columnists and non-profit associations involved in
Free Software or intellectual property as well as possible groups
that might be fit to become associated to the FSF Europe.
Promoting the Free Software philosophy is very much a matter of
contact, cooperation and information. With your help and all
thepeople you can convince to do the same, the FSF Europe will
be able to more effectively further Free Software.
If you haven't done so already, we suggest that you subscribe
to the FSF Europe mailing lists at http://mailman.fsfeurope.org
and take a look at the archives to inform yourself on what has
been discussed already.
There are also a few concrete tasks you could become active on,
if you want.
1.) Web pages. If you want to contribute by building the FSF
Europe web pages, you can export them to your own computer and
modify them to improve or add what you have in mind. See the
page https://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group_id=53 for technical
details. When you've modified the pages, generate a patch and
upload it at https://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?group_id=53. It
will be reviewed and shortly integrated if we agree that it is a
useful addition. If you plan to contribute on a regular basis we
can provide you with a protected access that allows you to
modify the pages by yourself.
2.) Various public tasks. You can follow the current tasks of
the FSF Europe at the URL https://savannah.gnu.org/pm/?group_id=53.
Don't hesitate to suggest new subjects. If you want to be
actively involved in the task management, we can grant you the
necessary rights to do so.
3.) Donations. There is a bank account that can be used for
donations if time is of the essence. If possible we would like to
ask you to wait until the FSFE has an official donation bank
account. The FSFE will seek to achieve charitable status, so
donations will be tax-deductible whenever possible.
Discussions should take place on the mailing lists mentioned
above. All information that you would like to tell the FSFE in
private can be sent to team(a)fsfeurope.org.
The bit about the web pages is still a little ahead of its time, but
we expect to be setting up proper pages soon with the help of those of
you who volunteered. Information about this will be posted here, as
well.
Personally I have been relatively busy with the trip (and things
resulting from it) to the Linux Expo/Linux World and Free Software
Foundation Award to Paris. My home page now contains a list of
conferences I attended/plan to attend so you can find out where to
meet me if you plan to get in touch
http://www.gnu.org/people/greve/conferences.html
The constitution of the Free Software Foundation Europe hub (the
central organization) is in the proofreading-phase now and after we
made final changes, the FSFE will be officially founded. This will
probably happen within the next two weeks.
Afterwards the FSFE needs to start working while creating the local
chapters throughout the other European countries.
So much for the current situation, this should be enough information
to process for now. We'll keep you updated.
Regards,
Georg C. F. Greve
on behalf of the FSF Europe
--
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)gnu.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe (http://www.fsfeurope.org)
Brave GNU World (http://brave-gnu-world.org)
Hello all,
I have not been very participating lately because I was out of town
for 2 month due to professional obligations; still, this is a project
that I hold very close to me and I hope everything is coming along for
the best.
Anyway, I sent the text attached to portuguese media about a week ago, I
hope I am not to late to publication ( the first one I sent was too
late, like a month after the event).
Best Regards,
fsm
--
Frederico S. Mu�oz GNU http://www.gnu.org
fsmunoz(a)sdf.lonestar.org Debian http://www.debian.orghttp://sdf.lonestar.org - SDF Public Access Unix Systems
I have signed up to this mailing list over a week ago, and haven't received
a single mailing since. So I start wondering, if this list is actually
working. Please reply.
Josef Dalcolmo
von Hoerner & Sulger GmbH
Schlossplatz 8
D-68723 Schwetzingen
Germany
Tel. (+49) 6202/5756-28
Tel. (+49) 6202/5756-0 (Operator)
Fax (+49) 6202/5756-55
E-mail: dalcolmo(a)vh-s.de
WWW http://www.vh-s.de
Josef Dalcolmo writes:
> I have signed up to this mailing list over a week ago, and haven't received
> a single mailing since. So I start wondering, if this list is actually
> working. Please reply.
It works :-)
--
Loic Dachary http://www.dachary.org/ loic(a)dachary.org
24 av Secretan http://www.senga.org/ loic(a)senga.org
75019 Paris Tel: 33 1 42 45 09 16 loic(a)gnu.org
GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt