Ignite OSCON 2015 (Portland, OR)

About this course

hi I'm Shankar crew and this is about why I don't use the GPL C I choose to use the permissive licenses for any new code that I write or any time that I

want to look for a new job in open source so heretic I hear you cry from the back of the room well look kittens there's no way you'd throw tomatoes at kittens would you

well these kittens are licensed under the permissive apache license which means no strings attached so i believe in the modern world we don't need the strings as a GPL anymore

what I'm talking about is copyleft or viral licensing the GPL compels you to share any changes that you make to GPL code under the GPL license so this kind of goes forward which some people

assume seem to like that's okay yes it says that if you change GPL licensed software and redistribute it or share it with anyone else you must share the entire work including your code under

the GPL you also must provide a copy of the source code including your work under the GPL you have no choice about this so the GPL is kind of like a cell phone

plan it's a cell phone plan that you can never leave so once you get a GPL phone you're stuck with always having a GPL phone and you always have to give away your phone number to anybody who asks

now imagine we're all learning to play marbles together so how you like different color marbles I like cat's eyes some people like Aggies if we all want to play together we need to have a

little bit of flexibility and allowing who's gonna bring what kind of marbles to the table so I respect people who want to use the GPL license and I'll avoid their software because I want to

be able to use my license for my work so why can't we play together I can't play with GPL code myself now I'm not saying that the GPL wasn't critical to the open the the original birth of open-source

because back then the GPL helped inform the industry about how important software licenses were and made sure that we all actually move the source code forward and made sure that

corporations couldn't lock up the source code when it was least because back then it was hard to share the code even for popular programs it was hard to find the source and the

GPL forced you to make sure that you would give away the source code when people asked this makes sure that corporations can't lock up the software after it's been released because we know

corporations load doing that the issue is that with any sort of licensing regime or any sort of belief system that makes everyone follow the same exact rules that's kind of hard for a lot of

people to accept so now that we have today a broader array of so many different open-source programs that we can choose to use and engage with and it's so easy to start new projects

people don't want to have as many of the restraints of copyleft licensing so analysts have shown that for new projects today there's a far greater number that are choosing permissive

licenses rather than copyleft this is a trend across industries and across communities now that open sources mainstream and we understand how business models work permissive licenses

allow many more business models to work so copyleft licensing prevents many business models from being able to make as much of our profit so people aren't going to be as interested in sharing

your GPL code in some cases and really life is about sharing when I share something I want to share it with as many people as possible because I'll get as many new ideas as possible in back in

my code even if some of them don't participate that's fine with me now another key point why the GPL I believe is not as important today is the rise of the foundations so open source is in

vogue it's and it's not just the code it's the people and it's the governance now that open source has spread beyond software into many other places these foundations are growing quickly so

groups like the Apache Software Foundation Free Software Foundation Eclipse many many more these groups are now trusted and respected stewards of hundreds of top tier software projects

and as nonprofits they have a vested interest in attracting as many new diverse contributors as possible so today instead of having the GPL enforce being able to share the source code and

not being able to lock it up these foundations have independent governance that ensure that the source code will be available for the future and that the communities will too so there's there's

a big theme in a lot of the talks today das con empathy drawing in new contributors helping out the newbies with three B's hiring a whole team of willie nelson's not rock stars

so the theme really is it's not about making the code work together better it's about helping people work together better the GPL is fundamentally about keeping the code free I am far more

interested in allowing you the freedom to do what you want with the code that we share so I'm Shane Kerr crew I don't use the GPL i use the apache license because i

want you to have the maximum freedom to build the next great product on top of my software so thank you and thank you to tow k and palinka my beautiful kittens goodnight