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Revising the GPL

Posted by michael on from the foundation-documents dept.

Exstatica writes "Finally, an update to that slightly outdated GPL (General Public License). This story discusses a few changes that the new GPL will include. Will the new GPL draw users to it, rather then using other licenses such as Apache's License or the Netscape Public License?"

5 of 434 comments (clear)

  1. To quote Linus Torvalds... by Jerk+City+Troll · · Score: 5, Informative

    Linus, in a recent interview, says:

    I really want a license to do just two things: make the code available to others, and make sure that improvements stay that way. That's really it. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything else is fluff.
    ...
    And the thing is, in my fuzzy "cannot plan his way out of a cardboard box" world, I don't worry too much about the next version of the GPL. I'm not a lawyer, I don't worry about the exact wording. In many ways, my only gripe with the GPL has been how many words it seems to need to say something very simple. That seems to be a common theme in any legal situation.

    What else is there to say?

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    Join Tor today!
  2. Re:Question by BetterThanCaesar · · Score: 4, Informative

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

    --
    "Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
  3. Re:Question by betelgeuse-4 · · Score: 3, Informative

    "... the G in GPL means GNU ..."

    It actually stands for 'General'. See the GPL FAQ.

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  4. Re:Question by Florian+Weimer · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ok, but what happens if someone buys the FSF.

    The FSF is contractually bound to continue publishing software under a free license (reread your assignment contract). They worst thing they could do is to switch to a BSD license which encourages software hoarding.

    If this bugs you, remove the "or later" part.

  5. Re:The GPL/LGPL worries me.... by iabervon · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is nothing in the GPL 2.0 which allows future versions to be used. The FSF (in the non-license portion of the GPL document) suggests licensing your work under "the GPL v2.0 or any later version published by the FSF", but there's no reason you have to do this. In particular, the Linux kernel is mostly under only the GPL v2.0 (portions of it are available under other licenses as well). Linus did it this way primarily because of the concerns you raise.

    The LGPL can be explained without the term "linking": you can distribute a non-(L)GPL binary so long as it is possible to replace any LGPL portions without needing to do anything that the recipient can't do. If anything, it is static linking which will disappear, making the LGPL easier to follow (if you change the portions you got from somewhere else, you have to release these changes).

    When some company manages to claim a patent on a feature of any software, regardless of the license, it becomes illegal to distribute it. The GPL is not special in this respect. Patents are not an issue for the GPL, which is a copyright license. They are, however, an issue for Free Software, because there's another entity which might restrict your freedom, and it's a thornier issue, because the holder of a patent is less likely to have needed to agree to a license than the holder of a copyright (since copyrights are often on derived works of some sort).