Re: The sad decline of copyleft software licenses? :(

[Jean Louis]

* Dennis Payne <dulsi@identicalsoftware.com> [2020-09-28 22:00]:
> On Mon, 2020-09-28 at 07:33 +0300, Jean Louis wrote:
> > Did you measure https://sourceforge.net/ ?
> > 
> > Did you measure Bitbucket, Gitlab, private, FTP sites, non-GNU
> > Savannah, and GNU Savannah or Launchpad?
> > 
> > Without proper measurement of statistics, the GPL is not in decline
> > for me. Because so far nobody have shown real statistics.
> > 
> 
> Measuring all the repos or all the software available on Debian is
> still wrong. If I go an create a new project with GPL but it is only
> useful to me that doesn't help grow the use of GPL software. Measuring
> what software people actually install and how that changes over time
> would be much more informative. If I convince Debian to package Bt
> Builder, it doesn't matter. If everyone is installing it afterward that
> means it is an important tool.

I did not measure all the software of Debian, specifically I have
measured software that I am using on my server. That is personal
statistics that is showing that the majority of software was GPL on
particular server.

If new project is only useful to you, it is still free software, it
has potential to be useful to other person in future. Many GPL
software were not initially discovered, so that is normal process. If
you only use it for you, you would not even publish it, right?

You need not get large number of people to install it to have use of
it. Think about GNU Health, only one skilled person who can install
that software can help the community to get better and healthier, as
hospital can manage the customers relations so much easier. Imagine it
is one larger hospital, so the use of such software becomes
tremendous, helpful to many people, but it can be installed only on 10
computers. 

Then you could compare it to installation of 2 millions proprietary or
MIT games, that did not help even one person get proper health
treatment, let us say that imaginary way.

Even 10 very usable software installations could overwhelme millions
of other non so usable installations of other software.

In general, GPL is not in decline, there is more and more GPL
software. 

Let me give you example from my side, some software is working on my
sid only for our team, it is not published, yet it is helping to
manage employees and their lives, their loans, debits and credits,
problems in family, sicknesses, support, and relations to families and
others, that is another examlpe that single installation can be so
much useful and helpful to people.

There is thus volume of use, and there is impact of the use. There is
quantity of users and quantity of actual practical help, those are all
different categories.

Jean