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Open Source License Popularity

John T. Haller, August 28, 2009

Popularity of individual open source license usage is tracked by several entities with the results published online. I thought it would be interesting to combine the license types that are similar and map out the overall popularity along with OSI and FSF approval and GPL compatibility. As you can see, the GPL/LGPL is the most popular license by a wide margin. The next 3 licenses are all GPL compatible in some way meaning up to 80% or more open source code is GPL compatible (you can't tell exactly as some version issues enter into the mix with the Apache and Perl licenses).

License Percent OSI Approved FSF Approved GPL Compatible
GPL/LGPL (2 & 3) 64.83% Yes Yes Yes
New BSD / MIT 10.21% Yes Yes Yes
Artistic License (Perl) 8.72% Yes Yes (2 Only) Yes (AL v2 Only)
Apache License 3.97% Yes Yes Yes (GPL3 Only)
Code Project Open License 3.28% No No No
Mozilla Public License 1.52% Yes Partially* No (Unless Specified)
Microsoft Public License 1.16% Yes Partially* No
Common Public License 0.58% Yes Yes No
zlib/libpng License 0.45% Yes Yes Yes
Eclipse Public License 0.45% Yes Yes No

Statistics from Black Duck Software from August 28, 2009.

* the FSF recognizes the license as a free software license but recommends against using it


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