OpenLogic Releases Results of Its Research on Popularity and Adoption of Open Source Licenses

OpenLogic, a provider of open source solutions, announced that its research on the popularity and adoption of various open source licenses revealed that GNU General Public License (GPL) is mostly chosen by open source developers while most enterprises prefer to use the open source software under the Apache License.

The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. This type of license is to guarantee developers’ freedom to share and change all versions of a program – to make sure it remains free software for all its users. The Apache license is a free software license authored by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and it requires preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimer, but it is not a copyleft license. Developers can use the source code for the development of proprietary software as well as free and open source software.

 OpenLogic analyzed which open source licenses are most used by enterprises versus those preferred by open source developers. While looking into open source projects, GPL emerged as the most popular open source license as most of the projects were licensed under GPL but when enterprise usage were analyzed it became clear that Apache-license projects were the most downloaded and most used in enterprise applications.

The company claimed that it read into data on downloads from OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX) as well as enterprise usage of open source licenses uncovered by OpenLogic's OSS Discovery scanning tools.  

Officials with the company stated that their new research revealed a license divide between open source developers and enterprises. Hands down, developers prefer using the GPL license for their code, but enterprises tend to avoid the GPL in favor of the Apache license or other liberal licenses. When the data are examined from the enterprises using the OpenLogic Deep Discovery scanning tool, one can primarily capture the use of open source by companies distributing software or electronics products containing software. These companies often try to avoid using open source licenses due to concerns about copyleft requirements and the impact on their own intellectual property.

OpenLogic concluded that its research findings only show that GPL advocates have more work to do to convince enterprises to embrace the GPL. At the same time, they show that open source developers choosing more liberal licenses will lower the barriers to enterprise adoption.