I think a more important aspect than the fact that Rubyforge hosts a lot of web projects is that Rubyforge hosts *Ruby projects*.
Ruby itself is dual-licensed under the Ruby License and the BSD license. To fit in well with the Ruby ecosystem, it only makes sense to use either of these licenses in your own works. The same is true for Launchpad - since it hosts a lot of Ubuntu stuff and Linux's (and Canonical's) license of choice is GPL, of course most projects that want to "play nice" in this ecosystem are going to follow suit.
If you took a look at the Drupal.org module hosting, you'd get 100% GPL licensed modules, because Drupal actually requires contributions to be placed under this license (http://drupal.org/licensing/faq#q4 and also q7)
People using GPL for extensions in a project that itself is BSD licensed is obnoxious (it does happen). The other way around wouldn't make much sense (if it is allowed at all); if your extension is BSD-licensed and the main project is GPL-licensed, people using your code are almost by definition also using the other project, so they are already bound to the terms of the GPL, which means you're adding no extra restrictions by releasing your code under the GPL.
Also, people tend to choose projects based on their personal preferences. If someone is using a GPL project, that's probably because they don't have a problem with it and will probably release their own code under the same license. For BSD, it's the same (people avoiding the GPL will end up using a BSD-licensed project), but there will also be people who prefer free software and choose the BSD-licensed project over its competitors for its features. They could still intend to release their own code under the GPL.
All this is assuming that more people who prefer BSD dislike using GPL code but people who prefer GPL don't necessarily dislike using BSD code (even if they prefer using GPL for their own code), and that people who don't care try to fit into the ecosystem of their platform by choosing a license that matches that of the platform.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ecosystems
Date: 2012-02-10 02:16 pm (UTC)Ruby itself is dual-licensed under the Ruby License and the BSD license. To fit in well with the Ruby ecosystem, it only makes sense to use either of these licenses in your own works. The same is true for Launchpad - since it hosts a lot of Ubuntu stuff and Linux's (and Canonical's) license of choice is GPL, of course most projects that want to "play nice" in this ecosystem are going to follow suit.
If you took a look at the Drupal.org module hosting, you'd get 100% GPL licensed modules, because Drupal actually requires contributions to be placed under this license (http://drupal.org/licensing/faq#q4 and also q7)
People using GPL for extensions in a project that itself is BSD licensed is obnoxious (it does happen). The other way around wouldn't make much sense (if it is allowed at all); if your extension is BSD-licensed and the main project is GPL-licensed, people using your code are almost by definition also using the other project, so they are already bound to the terms of the GPL, which means you're adding no extra restrictions by releasing your code under the GPL.
Also, people tend to choose projects based on their personal preferences. If someone is using a GPL project, that's probably because they don't have a problem with it and will probably release their own code under the same license. For BSD, it's the same (people avoiding the GPL will end up using a BSD-licensed project), but there will also be people who prefer free software and choose the BSD-licensed project over its competitors for its features. They could still intend to release their own code under the GPL.
All this is assuming that more people who prefer BSD dislike using GPL code but people who prefer GPL don't necessarily dislike using BSD code (even if they prefer using GPL for their own code), and that people who don't care try to fit into the ecosystem of their platform by choosing a license that matches that of the platform.