[Observation] Open software licensing in the real world

Last week in class we discussed the topic of open source software in particular Linux. A interesting topic of discussion was about licensing and how free open software can avoid splintering. Licensing helps reduce the chance of the software splintering. Two licensing terms I became more similar with are GNU and FOSS.

GNU was launched by Richard Stallman, a software freedom activist (pretty cool right!). Here is a picture of Richard.

"Richard Stallman - Fête de l'Humanité 2014 - 010" by Thesupermat 

GNU stands for Gnu Not Unix, another clever play on words, as programmers love to do! Richard also pioneered Copyleft (Another Pun) which uses the principles of copyright law to preserve the right to use, modify and distribute free software.

After last weeks (Week 10) class I wanted to check what open software was used by applications I use everyday, and more importantly was the redistribution of the software correctly licensed.  So I decided for my 'Quick and Dirty' experiment I would try and find the licensing for four applications I use most often on my mobile. These were WhatsApp, Snapchat, Dublin Bus and Spotify.

Results:
Snapchat:
I could not find the licensing section for Dublin Bus or WhatsApp, this is not to say the licensing section is absent from their application, I could just not find it.

Both Spotify's and Snapchat's licensing where under the settings tab.
I have attached a screenshot from Snapchat's licensing page, you will notice they have used a lot of Apache software.

Spotify:
In comparison to Spotify, the language is a lot more user friendly in terms of users who are unfamiliar with the licensing of open source software. This user friendly language makes this section of the application more accessible to all users. It would seem to me that whoever wrote this part of the application had read Thaler and Sunstein book NUDGE, As this friendlier language transforms this complex information into something people can understand. Also Spotify talks a lot more about GNU and FOSS, compared to Snapchat.

Conclusion and Further Research
I would love to hear of any other applications mobile or web-based where I should check out their licensing section. I also think it would be cool, next time you are on an application you use often, if you can find where the licensing is and what type of open software the application uses. I would also be interested in peoples opinion whether the licencing section should be in 'layman' and simple terms or the 'techy' language should be kept as only people interested in software would check the licencing section?