Today's software license landscape

Nine months after the introduction of GPL 3.0 and LGPL 3.0, what does the open source license landscape look like?

As of the end of last month, the number of GPL 3.0 licenses released is 1,574, and number of LGPL 3.0 licenses released is 219. That represents 2,817% and 4,280% growth, respectively, over nine months.

However, the rate of month-to-month growth has now slowed to 19% and 18% respectively. Most experts attribute the GPL adoption rate slowdown to three factors:

• GPL 2.0 being good enough and having support – for example, the Linux kernel continues to be licensed under GPL 2.0 due to the influence of Linux creator Linus Torvalds

• The patent termination issues are going away

• DRM is a non-issue for most open source projects

With the “bloom off the rose” on GPL 3.0, announcements with explicit references to GPL 3.0 are not occurring as often now as they did several months ago. Nevertheless, there are still software developers who intend to use the GPL 3.0 license or will eventually adopt it. Stay tuned.