The Expert Community is Bullish on GPLv3

  

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After draft 3 of the GPLv3 came out we asked our Expert Community, a good representative sample of the open source community what they thought of it.  (Note, I'm not a statistician but I believe the Expert Community is representative of the open source community because the Expert Community represents most of the 250+ open source software products we ship plus a bunch we don't ship yet.) 

Overall, the Expert Community was pretty positive on the GPLv3.  The ratio was 3:1 - those that thought the GPLv3 was good for open source versus those that didn't.  Over 70% said they would support moving the projects they work with to the GPLv3 and, surprising, 77% expected that to happen very quickly - within a year of having a final version of the GPLv3.  (At least that was surprisingly quick to me  - maybe I've spend too much time in the corporate world!)

While bullish on the GPLv3, the community did have concerns about some of the provisions like DRM and patents.  I think that's wise - at least until the provisions get finalized. I wished we had asked some more questions about what their concerns were - maybe they will comment here!

Here's some of the data so you can see for yourself:

Expert Community respondents believe that GPLv3 is good for open source.

• 50% of the respondents said that they believe GPLv3 is good for open source.
• 29.5% are not sure
• 15.9% said they do not believe GPL v3 is good for open source

âªHowever, respondents also have concerns about provisions of Draft 3.

• 57% were concerned about provisions around patent issues
• 57% were concerned about provisions around digital rights management
• 43% were concerned about provisions around the use of  GPL-covered programs in consumer devices 

âªOf respondents that are working on GPLv2 projects

• 71% would be in favor of some or all of these projects moving to GPLv3
• 77% thought that it would take a year or less for their projects to move to GPLv3 once the final version of GPLv3 was released

 I think it's interesting how this data has been interpreted differently by different folks.  Some, like us, think this means that the  Expert Community members we surveyed are in favor of the GPLv3 (50% say it's good versus 15.9% that say it's not) while others have decided that if only 50% say it's good than half must think it's not good.   Is your glass half full or half empty?