Black Duck Software recently published some summary statistics about free and open source software license adoption. Any of these conclusions might be reasonable if the 5% figure was meaningful, but Black Duck has given us no reason to believe it is; if anything, their own statements suggest it isn't.

"I had the good fortune of attending a lecture by Free Software Foundation President and Founder, Richard Stallman. Stallman often makes distinctions between free in the monetary sense and free in the civil rights sense. His talk focused on freedom in a civil rights sense. While his focus was on software, the most important parts of his talk for me were his statements on art..."

"On the last weekend, I got a chance to interact with two eminent personalities who compete with each other in leaving their legacy in the minds of people whom they meet. While RMS is admired by thousands of people around the world including me for creating the Free Software Movement and for his uncompromising stand, Eben Moglen leaves his mark for his oratory skills, humbleness and humility.

"It is finally done… after much delay and a couple of suggestions and corrections by iSummit participants, I managed to publish online a report from Free Culture 2008, the research workshop I helped organize during the iSummit in Sapporo, on the themes of sharing, online freedom and collaboration, commons-based peer production and Creative Commons licensing..."

"...I much admired the way in which complex ideas were simplified and framed in historical, legal, economic, political and societal contexts to maximise the connections made [...] Whilst Stallman calls for “sharing” , in New Zealand schools we identify “relating to others” and “participating and contributing” as worthy

"I just came back from Richard Stallman's lecture at the University of Auckland. I was surprised by the amazing interest in his talk, the lecture hall being entirely jam-packed full, people standing along the back and all the way out into the hallway. I was lucky to be there early enough to get one of the last few chairs..."

* «With the Hurd, users can change anything in their system which doesn't affect other users.»