"We're continuing to see signs that the dominant GPL open source
license may be fading from favor among commercial open source
software players. The latest move away from the GPL comes from
content management software vendor Alfresco, which is moving to the
LGPL after originally releasing its code under the GPL three years
ago. The reasoning for the shift, according to Alfresco CEO John
Newton, is the company sees greater opportunity beyond being a
software application, particularly given the emergence of the
Content Management Interoperability Services standard. Alfresco won
mostly praise for its move, and it does make sense given where open
source is going these days.
"I believe the emerging trend away from GPL and toward more
permissive, mixable licenses such as LGPL or Apache reflects the
broadening out of open source software not only throughout the
enterprise IT software stack, but also throughout uses beyond
individual applications, frameworks and systems. More and more open
source software vendors are pursuing opportunities in embedded use
or OEM deals whereby open source software often must sit alongside
or even inside of proprietary code"
