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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."
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.
From TFA:
Eben announced his intentions to upgrade the GPL with a new processor, a better graphics card, and more memory. This will enable resource intensive software to use the GPL as well.
Unknown host pong.
no it doesnt....
GPL = General Public License (GNU)
and
GNU = Gnu's Not Unix
liqbase
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.
2 1337 4 u!
You gotta love contradictions. The first article states that the current version of the GPL is "2.2", which was "released August 2004"; the interview with Linus states that the GPL is supposed to undergo its "first revision in 13 years".
Obviously, both statement's can't be true at the same time. What's correct now? (And considering that the articles are from the same publication, doesn't anyone actually *check* what's written for factual accuracy before it goes live?)
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Based on the wording of the GPL, you cannot release a GPL program under an old lisence. It states that the program is licensed under either the included version, or any subsequent version thereof, at the discretion of whoever is going to be changing it. The GPL is also "unmodifiable" (Something I personally don't like) I assume, technically, this also forces derivitaves of someone who chose to use GPL3 on a GPL2'd project would forever be locked in GPL3
I hate grammar Nazi's.
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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*feeds the troll*
If you use GPL, FSF can arbitrarily change the GPL to anything they want at anytime.
From the GPL:
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time... Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
upgradepkg gpl
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.
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...
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.
no, because it says v2 or any subsequent version. If they did make a hypothetical, evil GPLv99 you could quite happily keep on using your code under v2. You wouldn't have to take it. As a result of this, you can't make the GPL any less free than it already is.
"Success is based on knowing how far to go in going too far"
Not all software should be under the Extreme GPL, but the option should be available to developers who want it.
We ought to have discussion about the GNU General Public License (GPL) v3. The GPLv2 is an important license, the most widely used free software license. We should have critical discussions to help make the GPLv3 better, and of course defining "better" requires understanding the goals of the license.
But there's a profound unfairness in the two articles linked to here. They are filed in the "Linux & Open Source" section on the eWeek website, and not by accident. The GPL was initially written well before either the Linux kernel or the open source movement began and it was written to serve the purpose of furthering software freedom (an issue the open source movement does not want to talk about because it gets in the way of making their pitch to business, this movement's main audience, on "solid pragmatic grounds rather than ideological tub-thumping", as their FAQ says. This name-calling is starkly less insightful than the analysis the Free Software Foundation offers about the open source movement). So, there is simple miscrediting going on here, but it's also ironic that is no "GNU/Linux & Free Software" section at this website. Such a section would be far more accurate for describing stories about the most widely used and most important free software license.
When version 3 of the GNU GPL is released, it will be the first version to come out that had a chance of being edited by someone involved in the open source movement. As far as I can tell, nobody from the open source movement has had a hand in revising any version of the GPL. The GPL was written by people from the FSF (and the listed author is the FSF). Yet the GPL is routinely cited as an open source license by proponents of that movement, essentially taking credit for work that nobody in that movement did.
The Linux kernel is but one program in a complete GNU/Linux system. It's ironic that this license is so pivotal to the development of the GNU/Linux OS but GNU can't get just a share of the credit.
Of the two men featured in articles which are linked to in this Slashdot thread, one is an authority on the GPL and a co-author of the GPL, the other is someone who exhibits no significant insight into how the free software community came to be or what the GPL is here to accomplish. I'm grateful that Linus Torvalds began the Linux kernel and continues to work on the most widely used fork of that kernel, but this is not about the technical inner workings of the Linux kernel, where Linus Torvalds is unquestionably an authority on the matter. Torvalds is no authority on the GPL or software freedom in general. If you point your friends to these two articles, please don't give Moglen and Torvalds equal billing here. Equal billing would either diminish the attention we should pay to Moglen's comments on this matter or give Torvald's comments more attention than he deserves on this topic.
Digital Citizen
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
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