Preview of GPL V3, Part 2

Meltr writes "NewsForge.com has published Part 2 of their GPL V3 preview. It clarifies Part 1, mentions the possibility of GPL V2.1, and discusses the system library exception and the issue of patents." We had covered their initial "sneak preview" a month ago.

Comments

There is no GPL Version 3 yet, so don't panic

[Bruce Perens]

RMS hasn't even started writing it. He's at the stage of soliciting your opinion. He has made it clear that he's not going to make any changes without an extended community consultation. The sky will not fall, the rules will not change for existing software because you always have the option of applying the present GPL, people will have a choice of what license version to apply to new software. Choice is good.

Thanks

Bruce

Huh?

[Enahs]

"The criterion has to be somewhat more general than just allowing libc. But we definitely do not want to permit linking with third-party non-free libraries."

I'm sorry to ask it, but who are "we"? Certainly not I. The GPL is a bit too restrictive for my tastes. Upon a second reading of the LGPL, it may be a violation of the LGPL to release non-libraries under that license.

Sure, mod me down as a troll. I really don't care. I have a differing opinion and should be silenced.

Imagine, if you will, working on a paper for a class. You decide to release this paper under the mythical Free Paper License, so that content providers can use it and so that other students can benefit from your work. So you go to the library and start collecting sources. You start referencing sources. You start quoting sources in your article.

But wait! You're in violation of your license! Wha...? You heard me. The mythical Free Paper License requires all referenced content to be available under the conditions of either the FPL or the LFPL. ;-) So you start reading the copyright information in the books and find references that work. While you find references that work, you find that they aren't all exactly what you need.

What to do then? You start writing a supplementary paper that will be available under the Lesser Free Paper License. Unfortunately, at this point your professor balks, stating that your paper should be dependent only on outside sources, and that he/she won't accept a paper that has extra dependencies. So you try to bribe someone else into writing the LFPL paper for you. No luck. So much for making your paper "Free."

The point of all this? The GPL is too restrictive IMHO. While RMS may see real danger to allowing linking to "non-Free" libraries, I fail to see it. It's no more restrictive than quoting a source in an academic paper that falls under a restrictive licensing/copyright notice.