Almost Two-Thirds of Software Companies Contributing To Open Source, Says Survey (networkworld.com) 30
Reader alphadogg writes: Open source's march toward preeminence in business software continued over the past year, according to a survey released by open source management provider Black Duck Software and venture capital firm North Bridge. Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey -- which was administered online and drew 1,300 respondents -- said that their companies encouraged developers to contribute to open-source projects, and a similar proportion said that they were actively engaged in doing so already. That's a 5% increase from the previous year's survey.
Re:Important to note: the GPL is NOT being used! (Score:4, Insightful)
The MIT and BSD licenses maximize freedom for developers and users. The GPL family of licenses, on the other hand, gives slightly more control to the developer, but removes a lot of freedom from the users of said code.
In a free-market environment, businesses will opt to deal with software having truly free licenses like the MIT and BSD licenses, rather than free-in-hype-only licenses like the GPL family of licenses.
Oh Bullshit, the only freedom the GPL limits is the freedom to be a commercial leach and sell other people's work as your own. If you don't want to play by the GPL rules, fine, don't, but quit whining about losing freedoms that you never had.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Said the GPL fanatic who loves to leech BSD code as well.
It's probably worse because GPL locks up the BSD code - any improvements made to the BSD code cannot be contributed back to the original project!
So maybe it should be less about "closed source leeching" and more a
Re: (Score:2)
>It's probably worse because GPL locks up the BSD code - any improvements made to the BSD code cannot br contributed back to the original project!
I don't think you understand what the GPL is and isn't. I can author an improvement in BSDed code used in my GPed project and offer the improvement back to the original authors under the BSD license. If it's my code i can do what I want with, if it;s my code, you can only do what I allow with it.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with the GPL for a lot of companies is that it's an all or nothing question. There's a fairly common sequence of adoption for BSD licensed code in companies:
First, they look at it and say 'this must be too good to be true, we can take it and not give anything back? Amazing!'. Then they get their lawyers to check the license and find that's really what it says, so that's what they do.
After a while, they discover that they've fixed some bugs that are only triggered by their workloads or added
Re: (Score:1)
Where does it say that?
"Two third" (Score:2)
/. can't even manage basic editorial tasks?
Re: (Score:2)
Was it edited? I wish /. would post a note when they do that.
Re: (Score:2)
/. can't even manage basic editorial tasks?
Question mark at the end? Who did you buy that UID from, and how much did it cost? You must be new here.
"encouraged developers to contribute" (Score:1)
That is not the same as companies contributing. How many of these companies are allowing their developers to contribute on company time? Sure go work for free on a project with an MIT licence the company can then use for free.
Edited for clarity... (Score:2)
...and rewritten as a car analogy, because why not?
The automotive industry's march toward preeminence continued over the past year, according to a survey released by automotive manufacturer Toyota and people with a financial incentive to keep Toyota relevant. Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey -- which drew 1,300 online responses from Toyota's most loyal followers -- said that their companies had parking spots for cars, and a similar proportion said that they actually remember the last time they drove a car. That's a 5% increase from the previous year's survey.
Most companies have the sense not to share numbers indicating that 1/3 of their most loyal followers have no active interest or need for their services. You'd just say that there's been a 5% uptick, year-over-year, and leave it at that. Sure, it's nice to see growth, but "encouraging" devs costs these companies nothing, contributing to open source is potentially of immense value to the developers engaged in it, and yet there's still a full third among the p