Is the GPL Really Declining?
I think there&#x27;s two split types of developers.<p>When I was younger, mostly hanging around on IRC servers and forums, coding just my own cool projects, I strongly believed in the GPL. All of my projects had it, and I wouldn&#x27;t even dream of allowing someone to use my code without making their entire project open too.<p>That&#x27;s the first type I think. The second type is the more HN-style professional programmer.<p>Now as I&#x27;ve grown up a little and interacted a lot more with the programming community, I&#x27;ve realised that the GPL licence just causes more pain and frustration to developers. If I want my source code under Apache-2.0, why should I have to change it to GPL just for you.<p>I want <i>anyone</i> to be able to do <i>whatever</i> they want to with my code. That includes developers wanting to create a proprietary application. Telling them they can&#x27;t is not freedom.<p>I feel we&#x27;ve lost ourselves in the freedom of users and forgotten about the people that make the applications for the users.<p>---<p>Edit: As a small P.S. to this, I think the middle ground is using the GPL for actual end-user applications, but leaving libraries and developer tools completely open with something like Apache-2.0 or MIT.