Moglen's Plans to Upgrade the GPL

Nick Irelan writes "Although it most certainly won't be easy, Eben Moglen is attempting to upgrade the GPL. He sees an opportunity to create a version of the GPL that will be able to adequately suit the needs of modern programmers. If they are implemented, his ideas will be the first major change the GPL has experienced since Richard Stallman wrote the original version. Eweek has an amazing article about Moglen's work. Linus Torvalds discussed what he believes should happen to the GPL with Eweek as well."

Comments

Hopefully good will come out of this.

[nberardi]

Hopefully he will listen to many of the concerns of corporations and the GPL use with in. If they make a better GPL it will be awsome, because my company won't be so hesitant to use or develop anything under the GPL. My company's biggest complaint with GPL is anything developed using GPL libraries must be GPL and released. They just want to make money and contribute back when it's nessisary and important.

Re:Hopefully good will come out of this.

[Xpilot]

My company's biggest complaint with GPL is anything developed using GPL libraries must be GPL and released.

That's why we have LGPL libraries. But I think your company misses the point of GPL. GPL'ed code is like public property, nobody should be able to deny others access to the code, and if you use this property you are obliged to contribute back to the community. Making it "optional" would mean a lot of greedy folks wouldn't do it at all, which is against the intent of the GPL.

Re:Hopefully good will come out of this.

[Scarblac]

My company's biggest complaint with GPL is anything developed using GPL libraries must be GPL and released.

Well, that's not even true. There is no need to release anything.

The GPL only states that if you choose to release (distribute) the code, it must be under the GPL.

Re:Hopefully good will come out of this.

[Nimrangul]

No, public domain is public property and noone can deny access to that code. GPL stuff is private stuff that is granted to the public under the condition that all works generated from it remains in the same position.

Re:I can't see this helping...

[Frymaster]

I'm worried that it will just add another 'compeletly separate' license

well, the lgpl has been around for a long while and it's caused no serious confusion so far. the fact is, if there are a lot of licenses it's easier to find one that suits your project and organization's requirements. choice good.

Surely they can't make too many changes...

[williamhb]

Remember clause 9 of the current GPL -- most GPL code either specifies "GPL version #.# or any later version", or does not specify a version at all in which case Clause 9 permits the user to choose any GPL version that has ever been published.

For existing code, a subsequent GPL revision can effectively only liberalise the usage rights - the user is free to choose to stick to the prior version. But oddly, perhaps this could could end up including "the right to restrict the use of modifications further" because of licence version creep. (See later in post for an example).

This is something that might be concerning to a whole raft of programmers who have released code under the GPL. Are Richard and Eben about to decide to "grant" rights to those pieces of code that the author never intended to grant? Or restrict rights, through version creep, they never intended to restrict?

Example 1 (version creep)...

Say I write package A, and release it under GPL 2. You are allowed to modify it and use it as a web service without being required to release your changes. But then a hypothetical GPL 3 is published which requires the publication of modified webservice code. No problem, you can still use GPL version 2. But then, someone integrates my package and some GPL version 3 code. The result has to be a GPL 3 package. But that means it is a modified version of my code which can no longer be modified for webservices without requiring the source code be published. It is a version of my GPL 2 code that does not have the full GPL 2 rights I released it under. Result: "That's not free!" I cry, and get very grumpy...

For anything other than extremely small changes to the GPL, version interoperability could get messy.

Example 2 (granting unintended rights - a bit of an extreme example)

A hypothetical GPL 4 is published which somehow allows integrating with non-Free code. A lot of people's business model (GPL is free, non-Free licence costs) gets instantly scuppered. The result is probably that the hapless company will attempt to invalidate all their GPL licences, claiming that they could not reasonably have expected the FSF to make this clause change, and therefore the modified licence is not valid. Result: lawyers at high noon.

For anything other than extremely small changes to the GPL, companies who have built their business around the GPL might start kicking up a stink...

But wait, there's more!

[DG]

I don't know about you, but I've never written a perfect program.

I assume that anything that gets released with source will have that source tweaked by someone to fix some bug somewhere.

I want those bugfixes to make their way back into the "general release" source. A bug fixed by one should be a bug fixed for all.

So for me at least, it's not that I'm afraid of the program being "stolen", but rather that I want to encourage the bugfixes to come back to me, and not be locked up in a box somewhere.

DG