GPL Project Watch List for Week of 01/11

The GPL v3 Watch List is intended to give you a snapshot of the GPLv3/LGPLv3 adoption for January 5th through January 11th, 2007.

January 11th - Popular Mechanics magazine anniversary
As of Friday, January 11th, the GPL v3 figure is at 1476 GPL v3 projects as compared to last weeks number of 1414 GPL v3 projects. This is an increase of 62 new GPL v3 projects, which is a sign that the rates are picking up again from the holiday slump. The LGPL v3 list is currently at 143 LGPL v3 projects up three projects from last week and the GPL v2 or Later count is at 6404. The last two weeks have been below average, in terms of adoption rates, but now that people are settling back into their jobs, the rate seems to be back to normal.





















New project conversions this week include:

• RPMDIG: RPMDIG displays recursive RPM dependencies for a given RPM and it also displays list of files and list of libraries which are required by these RPMs.
• LinuxSpeaks: a collection of scripts and library modules that aspire to be a comprehensive vocal, sight-free user interface to the Linux operating system.
• Dragon Player: a KDE video player with an uncluttered interface and smart features. A bundled KPart integrates it into Konqueror.

Current Events in Open Source
Here come the open source IPOs
Fortune magazine has published a list of its hot IPO tips for 2008. Three out of the five - MySQL, Ingres and SugarCRM - are open source companies, while another - Parallels - is an open source project sponsor (for the record, the other Fortune tip is ExactTarget). Here’s a look at Fortune’s assessment of the four open source-related vendors, together with a quick 451 CAOS Theory view, and a terrible pun.
http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/01/11/here-come-the-open-source-ipos/

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.





Regards,

Ernest M. Park

Opinions on GPLv3 Adoption

Matt Asay always has thoughtful commentary on the market, and we found his opinion on the GPLv3 license interesting. There is also an interesting TalkBack to Matt's blog from Giovani Spagnolo


For what's it's worth, our research indicates that GPLv3 adoption is likely going to be tied to new releases, since it is incompatible with existing GPLv2 licenses and most other licenses. A number of the GPLv3 releases that were announced do not exist beyond a roadmap and their presence along with a license file in a CVS repository.

Therefore, the “or later” does give us an indication of a conditional adoption, the near future will start to more clearly show the signs as many of the projects that we are watching, the ones that have 2 – 4 milestone releases a year, will have their next milestone release represent the new licensing.

Based on the signs so far, we are seeing a slight increasing rate of adoption over the short time since the license has been released.

--Ernie Park