EruhinimI was curious recently about how much Ubuntu has changed over time particularly licenses of software installed by default. It’s not what you’d expect.
Some preliminary results for packages installed by default can be seen here:
Ubuntu 14.04 codenamed trusty and 24.04 codenamed noble are exactly 10 years apart.
GPL-like licenses still take the big chunk of software that goes into Ubuntu. The major difference with these ones and others is copyleft.
Looking at the bigger software packages/subsystems, we have:
| Component | Ubuntu 14.04 | Ubuntu 24.04 |
|---|---|---|
| Startup System | Upstart (GPLv2) | systemd (LGPLv2) |
| Desktop Environment | Unity (GPLv3) | GNOME (GPL-2.0-or-later) |
| Display Server | X11 (MIT) | Wayland (MIT) |
| Software Bundles | N/A | snap (GPLv3) |
| Video Player | Totem (GPLv2+) | Totem (GPLv2+) |
| Email Client | Evolution (LGPLv2.1) | Thunderbird (MPLv2) |
| Web Browser | Firefox (MPLv2) | Firefox (MPLv2) |
| Kernel | Linux (GPLv2) | Linux (GPLv2) |
Notes
- LGPLv2.1, a relaxed form of GPL. You can link proprietary code to it.
- MIT, a permissive free software license that allows users to freely use, modify, and distribute software.
- MPL, Mozilla Public License (MPL) a weak copyleft free software license. Requires modifications to be open-sourced, but allows proprietary code to link against MPL-licensed libraries.
The excellent dpkg-licenses package was used to obtain the data.