Re: BCS OS Licence

[admered1]

		  Interesting point.

The scope of the analysis you describe was intra-project. You looked at the activity of a single project and then compared it with other single projects and then added the GPL and non-GPL projects up together.

I would suggest that this only gives part of the picture.

I wonder if there is a way of formally analysing the activity of the GPL codebase as a whole. and comparing it with (eg) the BSD codebase.

To my mind, the main advantage of the GPL (and offspring) compared with BSD style licenses, is that the GPL does not allow people to rip the code off and use it without paying back to the community. A great chunk of Windows XP is actually slightly modified BSD code, but this isn't obvious to the ordinary user.

My personal approach is that I really don't mind anyone using code I have contributed, but if they are going to make money directly out of selling it, I want some too. Only fair. The GPL mandates this (or close enough for my taste) and the BSD does not.

However, I suspect a core reason for the lack of variation in activity across the projects on SourceForge is that developers for the most part don't really care that much about the legalese and are more interested in getting the code to work.