10.25.07
Evens Data’s GPLv3 Survey is Meaningless. Here’s Why. (Updated)
In our recent writings we remarked on the rising adoption of the GNU GPLv3 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9]. A few days ago we also mentioned the Evans Data survey, which conflicts with the methods used by Palamida.
The following new article, which covers the recent FSF powwow, reveals the great weaknesses in the methodology embraced by Evans Data.
Smith says that since the survey doesn’t say what projects the developers queried by Evans are working on, the survey tells you “basically nothing…. Maybe they all work on one of the BSD distributions, or Apache projects. If that’s the case, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that they have no plans to use GPLv3. It would be more interesting to poll people already working on GPLed projects, but even that wouldn’t necessarily reveal the whole story. Some projects probably intend to upgrade, but simply won’t get around to it until they do another major release. Others might be waiting for a library that they use to upgrade — I know that this is the case for a handful of KDE programs at least, for example, since Qt is unfortunately released under GPLv2 only.”
We actually pointed this out before. There’s no overnight avalanche of adoption because a new major release is needed to justify a licence change. It is pointless to release a new version where the code is totally unchanged, but only a licence is upgraded. With all due respect to Evans Data, one should stick with Palamida’s realistic perspective.
In lieu of sending out bi-weekly updates on GPLv3 conversions, we have moved to an RSS-feed model so that if you would like to continue receiving the information, it is easy to subscribe.
Please help Palamida spread its word because many wealthy parties out there have interest in blocking GPLv3 adoption. They use FUD and deception to achieve this [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. They build stereotypes and make bigots.
Update: another large project has proudly announced its upgrade to the GPLv3 (press release even), which is also praised.
Daniel Chalef, KnowledgeTree’s chief operating officer, praised the GPLv3 as modern, well-structured and a significant achievement for the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.