GPL: fear is the key

By Sam Varghese
Monday, 16 July 2007 06:02

Opinion and Analysis

The third revision of the General Public Licence has been out for just short of three weeks but plenty of people are already questioning why take-up has been so slow.

This, after less than three weeks.

After the initial question about take-up (in various forums) the talk then tends towards a standard argument - take-up is slow because the licence will hurt developers_and_business.

I've even seen a few "surveys" - you know the kind which the author refers to as "a quick survey." It reminds me of a man I worked with in the Middle East; whenever he wanted to bolster his reports with a bit of vox pop, he would resort to citing a "quick survey among taxi-drivers in ....."

Of course, he was always the person who had done the survey though he never mentioned it.

There's one thing driving this kind of talk.

Fear.

A large number of tech writers - I wouldn't call them journalists and sully my own profession - are fearful that the licence will slow adoption of Linux in the workplace. And that would lead to a lessening of their own importance and influence.

It would also mean a smaller pay cheque.

Hence they are trying to spread this fear among businesses.