The official final release of the GPL is still a day away, but it’s possible that over 5,500 projects could be migrating to it in very quickly.
Software vendor Palamida, which develops an application that is used to identify licenses and potential licensing issues, estimates that at least 5,509 projects have indicated an intention to move to GPL version 3.
The GPLv3 figures are part of a new public online effort at Gpl3.palamida.com from Palamida to track adoption of the new license.
“FSF (Free Software Foundation) will always be the site for information about GPLv3,” Palamida CEO Mark Tolliver told internetnews.com. “But as we looked at it [GPLv3] we thought there would be a lot of interest in which projects have or have not decided to use GPLv3 and since it’s our business to understand that we said this is an opportunity for us to give back.”
Tolliver explained that Palamida already has a sizable team whose job is to find out what licenses application projects are using. Until now, that information was kept mostly to Palamida’s IP Amplifier customers. IP Amplifier, which is Palamida’s license detection software, has now also been upgraded to be able to fully detect and identify instances of GPLv3 licensed code. Palamida had pledged to provide the new functionality as far back as April of this year. The company’s main competitor, Black Duck, said it would be ready for GPLv3 as well.
“We have to stand ready to help people as the focus changes from the vetting and the creation of the GPL version 3 to the actual pragmatic decision making around it,” Tolliver said.
The online site will differ somewhat from what Palamida offers its customers. Theresa Bui Friday, vice president and co-founder of Palamida, explained that the IP Amplifier compliance library will actually flag which project have actually moved to GPLv3 and allow customers to detect it in absolute manner.
“On the website we will offer an indication of projects that have indicated a commitment to move to GPLv3 that may not necessarily have actually moved yet,” Bui Friday explained.
Though Palamida is showing over 5,500 projects intending to move to GPLv3 it is still a small percentage of the 370,00 GPLv2 projects that Palamida estimates exist. So there are a lot of project that may well choose to migrate.
“GPL 2 is the most widely used license by a significant margin and so it’s our opinion that we will see substantial movement from GPLv2 to GPLv3,” Tolliver said.