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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."
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The issue of Web services has to be considered, he said. Some in the community are calling for a strong copyleft license with code that is used and changed to be returned to all. Others want the opposite.
"I do not believe that we will be reach consensus on this front, so I believe the license will have to accommodate options as to the question of Web services, but this must be squared with the ideological pursuit of freedom," he said.
I thought that this was interesting. So if a change like this were made it would make the GPL similar to the initial versions of Apple's Public Source License. In the first versions of that license you were required to submit any source code changes you made even if you didn't redistribute the software and only used it internally. My understanding is that if you're a Web Services company and you use modified GPL software, you don't need to contribute back the modifications you've made as long as you don't redistribute your modified software to anyone.
I doubt that the GPL will ever adopt this requirement, but it's interesting that some in the community want this.
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"1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program."
found here. So you really do have to advertise the fact your software uses GPL code.
Though I hardly think this is bad for companies as _they_ knew this upfront. If you want to dip into the community well, you better be prepared to put more back in. If that is to onerous then you have zero right to use it.
For example, Linus explicitly allows non-GPL'd software to run over Linux, though an addition to the LICENSE file. In this case, Torvalds wasn't modifying the GPL, he was essentially adding an additional license.
This is allowed because a license (as opposed to an EULA) is just a set of permissions. Each set of permissions adds to any you already have (including your default set of "fair use" privileges.) You can license any project you own under as many licenses you wish, and end users can pick and choose which (complete) licenses they want to agree to. (The word "complete" in that sentence is important.)
Also, while the GPL is unmodifiable for existing projects that do not belong to you, if you have a strong enough case you can persuade the FSF to agree to a modified version for projects you own, on occasion even if the result is a license incompatable with the GPL. For example, the Affero General Public License, whose history you can read about here.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The issue of Web services has to be considered, he said. Some in the community are calling for a strong copyleft license with code that is used and changed to be returned to all. Others want the opposite.
"I do not believe that we will be reach consensus on this front, so I believe the license will have to accommodate options as to the question of Web services, but this must be squared with the ideological pursuit of freedom," he said.
This is *very* interesting. There is an enormous engine of online services that is running as a for-profit enterprise using GPL software. phpBB, OSCommerce, and more are provided commercially, quite possibly with modifications.
This means that in the new GPL, there will be a GNU-supported variant which requires a web service provider running a modified version of GPL software *as a web service* to release the source code to any changes they made. I'd love to hear major projects weigh in on their opinion. Would future phpBB/mysqladmin/OSC versions use this variant, or would they opt to allow non-released versions which ran only as web services to remain in the hands of the modifiers?
It will be interesting, too, because there may be disputes over what exactly is covered. For example, phpBB distributes a lot of *.php scripts, but they also have a slew of materials like SQL Schemas and
Morever, web services are very technically different because so many are written in interpreted languages. You can't modify Apache without compiling it. But with phpBB, you can open up a file, make a tweak, and it instantly takes effect on a live site. If you pre-install a GPL web service for your customer as a provider, how do you then make sure they're apprised of the license terms and don't inadvertantly commit themselves to a source code release because they edited some file in an application you installed for them?
I can say I'll certainly be watching this development with great interest.