Non-commercial licenses, etc. are the evolution of what people wanted from GPL and why they were using it. Vast majority of developers using it were doing it in a misguided attempt to get sustainability and contributions back to the project. Includes biggest adopters like Linux.
Conversation
People like Linus never bought into the Free Software movement. The vast majority of large projects using GPL never cared. Many of those are now going to move on to restrictive licenses. It's not just companies. A lot of other smaller projects are starting to move too.
1
1
No, the vast majority of GPL projects are not changing their licenses, and many mindfully made their choice because the authors have an ethical position on protecting Software Freedom.
2
2
Vast majority of people already moved on to just using MIT, BSD, Apache 2, etc. and a lot of the major projects still using GPL are now moving to these non-commercial licenses if they're in a position to do it. It's why they used it in the first place: restricting usage.
2
3
Name one major community maintained software package (e.g., Linux, QEMU, WINE, Samba, Git, Xen, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, ...) that has abandoned GPL / AGPLv3?
1
Linux kernel GPLv2-only ecosystem is much different from the Free Software movement / ideology. They have a totally different take on what the license means, what it accomplishes and why it should be used. Linux kernel, Git, etc. aren't part of the Free Software movement.
2
"The Git project chose to use GPLv2 to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software---to make sure the software is free for all its users."
git-scm.com/about/free-and
1
That sure sounds like the mantra of Free Software to me...
1
Linus chose the license of Linux and Git. And it is clear to me that he chose the license because it has freedom retaining properties.
zdnet.com/article/linus-
1
1
I don't see the same thing as you in that text. I see him saying that he chose it as a way to force people to give back to the project and to avoid fragmentation. They see GPLv2 + rapidly changing internal APIs as a way to force contributing to Linux, not 'user freedom' stuff.
It doesn't actually force you to give back at all. It's more their intentional API and code churn forcing people to do that. I don't think there would be any substantial difference in practice if the project was Apache 2 licensed. They're fine with portable closed source drivers.
1
2