Study of ~4M open-source packages: in 2019, 67% relied on use of permissive licenses like Apache, up 3%, while only 33% used restrictive “copyleft” licenses
Thomas Claburn / The Register : Tweets: @satish_babu , @markterrel , and @carnage4life Tweets: Satish Babu / @satish_babu : A survey of four million #FOSS applications reveals that the use of permissive open source licenses such as MIT and Apache 2.0 is increasing, while the copyleft licenses, particularly the GPL family, continues to decrease. https://www.theregister.co.uk/ ... Mark Terrel / @markterrel : Interesting how much #GPL has declined in the last few years. If you have an open source project, what license did you pick and why? #opensource #developer #programming https://www.theregister.co.uk/ ... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : This chart is a great example of how much the politics of tech has changed. In the past Open Source was all about sharing via copyleft licenses like GPL. As tech is dominated by 💰, licenses which allow proprietary usage of code (e.g. MIT) now more popular https://www.theregister.co.uk/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This study lands mid-arc in open source's commercialization push: venture money has made multi-billion-dollar exits normal for open-source startups (big VC raises and exits), and companies have been experimenting with restrictive licenses designed to generate revenue. Against that backdrop, the numbers show the opposite pull at the package level — permissive terms gaining share, not losing it.
The permissive drift has precedent: Facebook's relicensing of React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js to MIT after community backlash signaled that permissive terms are what large adopters will accept. A 67/33 split across four million packages quantifies how far that preference now reaches.
First-order effects
- Companies embedding open-source code face fewer copyleft obligations: with 67% of packages under Apache- and MIT-style terms, the default dependency carries no requirement to release derivative source.
- GPL-family projects compete for a shrinking share of new usage, weakening copyleft's leverage over downstream commercial users.
Second-order effects
- Maintainers already earning below-poverty incomes on platforms like Open Collective (80%+ of popular projects underpaid) get less reciprocal value from permissive adoption, pushing more projects toward the dual-license and restrictive-license models companies are adopting to charge.
- Compliance attention shifts from license obligations to supply-chain risk: the Linux Foundation and Harvard work mapping the most-used FOSS components inside enterprises shows the exposure is now about vulnerable, ubiquitous permissive code rather than copyleft violations.
Third-order effects
- If permissive dominance keeps growing, open-source sustainability structurally depends on monetizing hosting, support, and dual licensing rather than license reciprocity — the model the commercialization debate is already testing.
- Copyleft risks marginalization to infrastructure projects with strong institutional backing, leaving license choice in the long tail driven by whatever maximizes corporate adoption.
The trend: Open-source licensing is drifting decisively toward permissive terms as corporate adoption and venture-funded commercialization reshape what maintainers optimize for.