Bonum Certa Men Certa

Data From Black Duck Challenged Again

GNU



Summary: The firm people cite when alleging that the GPL declines is not telling the whole story

Proprietary firm Black Duck is being criticised by Jose R Rodriguez, who tells us that their results are "highly unscientific", citing this blog post which states: "At FOSDEM, John Sullivan delivered an interesting talk titled Is copyleft being framed? to verify alleged claims on the decline of GPL-d software. (Slides are available.) The crux of the talk is the analysis he performed on the Debian archive to discover the amount of software we distribute that is covered by GPL, LGPL, or AGPL ("GPL-d" for short in the remainder).



"John's talk steps in an interesting and long running debate (a recent summary of which is available in this ITWire article). The most interesting part is the discrepancy among John's results and Blackduck's, which are often use to argue how the popularity of the GPL license is declining. That might be the case. Or not. The more analyses we do to find it out, the better.

"The underlying assumption on John's work is that Debian is a representative sample of the Free Software out there, which I think is a reasonable assumption. I find the analysis presented in the talk completely satisfactorily from a purely scientific point of view. The same cannot be said by Blackduck's result: both their methods and data are secret, making it impossible for anyhow to reproduce their experiments. Highly unscientific.

"Still, John's results are surprising: as much as 87 percent of Lenny's packages and 93 percent of Squeeze's are GPL-d. That seems a lot. Puzzled about that, John discussed with me the issue before his talk, in search for pitfalls in his methods or data. Finding none, I pointed him to the almighty DktrKranz for some extra review; who found nothing either. To stay on the safe side, even during his talk John called for independent reviews of his results. What could be wrong?"

Centrify, another friend of Microsoft's sphere of influence, rears its head again. We are going to try to keep track of those sorts of firms. They usually have strong Microsoft connections, but those who cite them neglect to say so.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
The Myth of an Aging (or Dying) GNU/Linux Leadership
Self-fulfilling prophecies as a tactic?
 
Rumour: Major Finance Layoffs at Microsoft Next Week
If the rumour is true, we'll be hearing barely anything from the mainstream media next week
Links 07/12/2023: More EPO Patents Squashed, More Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine "Glitches" Found
Links for the day
Still Not 'Canceled'
Ted Ts'o, Jan Kara, Linus Torvalds last month
Google is Googlebombing the Term "Gemini"
Could Google not pick a name that's already "taken"?
Links 06/12/2023: Bitcoin Rebound, China Downgraded by American Firm, Yahoo! Layoffs Again
Links for the day
Shooting the Messenger Using Bribes and Secrecy Bonds
We seem to live in a world where accountability for the rich and well-connected barely exists anymore
Links 06/12/2023: Many More December Layoffs
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 05, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 05, 2023
PipeWire 1.0: Linux audio comes of age
Once upon a time, serious audio users like musicians and audio engineers had real trouble with Linux
This is How 'Linux' Foundation Presents Linux to the World
Right now it even picks Windows over Linux in some cases
Links 05/12/2023: Microsoft's Chatbot as Health Hazard
Links for the day
There's Nothing "Funny" About Attacking Free Speech and Software Freedom
persistent focus on the principal issues is very important
Professor Eben Moglen Explained How Software Patent Threats Had Changed Around 2014 (Alice Case) and What Would Happen Till 2025
clip aged reasonably well
GNU/Linux Adoption in Africa, a Passageway Towards Freedom From Neo-Colonialism
Digi(tal)-Colonialism and/or Techolonialism are a thing. Can Africa flee the trap?
CNN Contributes to Demolition of the Open Web
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Eben Moglen on Encryption and Anonymity
The alternate net we need, and how we can build it ourselves
Yet More Microsofters Inside the Board of Mozilla (Which Has Just Outsourced Firefox Development to Microsoft's Proprietary Prison)
Do you want a browser controlled (and spied on) by such a company?
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 04, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, December 04, 2023
GNU/Linux Now Exceeds 3.6% Market Share on Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
things have changed for Windows in China
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 05/12/2023: Debt Brake in Germany and Layoffs at Condé Nast (Reddit, Wired, Ars Technica and More)
Links for the day