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To: Golden Eagle
The General Public License (GPL) accounts for 73% of open source projects

I've heard up to 80%. However, a quick search through SourceForge (the most popular repository for OSS, where most of the software is GPL) will show you that a vast majority of those projects are nothing, most not even out of the beta stage. There are about four times as many projects that have not progressed to production/stable/mature as have.

Let's look at software that matters: Linux, gcc, Apache web server, Firefox, Thunderbird, Tomcat, Python, Perl, SpamAssassin, MySQL, PostgresSQL, PHP, FreeBSD, CVS, X-Windows, Solaris, Darwin (OS X core). I can't think of any other open source software off the top of my head right now, can you?

Four of those are under the GPL, and MySQL has an alternate commercial license. The rest are under other licenses.

92 posted on 02/23/2006 12:42:24 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
I can't think of any other open source software off the top of my head right now, can you?

Openoffice.org uses the LGPL.

93 posted on 02/23/2006 12:48:32 PM PST by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: antiRepublicrat

Mono, Wine, Yast, Gimp, Hurd, and how could you forget Open Office? It's GPL isn't it?

Most are Gpl because it has a sneaky little clause the Free Software Foundation lawyers use to confiscate code from others.


96 posted on 02/23/2006 1:00:50 PM PST by Golden Eagle
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