updating the GPL's status in http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category ?

[Chris Travers]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Luis Villa <luis at tieguy.org> wrote:
> While working on my last email, I noticed that
> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category lists GPL/LGPL 3 as
> 'uncategorized', and superseded licenses does not include GPL/LGPL v2.
> Given that Black Duck says that GPL3 is now the fifth most popular
> license[1], surpassing several of the licenses in the 'popular or
> widely used' category, and that its maintainer considers it
> superseded, it seems like it is probably time to go ahead and move v3
> to 'popular/widely used' and v2 to 'superseded' (especially if someone
> is editing the list to deal with my other email.)

The issue is that the GPL v 2 is still popular among many developers
who either feel they don't understand the GPL v3, who don't feel their
projects can meet some of the new criteria in the GPL v3,  or who
disagree with RMS on some points.

These licenses are really different licenses and have different
ramifications for projects.  Linus Torvalds, for example, has released
the Linux kernel under the GPL v2 (only) because of ideological
differences with RMS.  LedgerSMB made a decision to stay with GPl v2
or later because, while we comply with the GPL v2, we do not presently
comply with the GPL v3.

Also I would not consider a license used by nearly half of open source
projects according to your own source to be "superseded."

Hope this helps,
Chris Travers