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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."
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!
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.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
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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infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
*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.
Linking against a GPL library (e.g. cygwin) requires the result to be GPL'd.
An LGPL'd library (e.g. libc) can be used by non GPL'd software so long as you provide the ability to upgrade the LGPL'd library (dynamically linking satisfies this condition, as does providing object files and a link script).
Both of the above assume that copyright actually applies (if, e.g., your work isn't legally a derived work of the GPL'd or LGPL'd code then things are rather different).
rage, rage against the dying of the light
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.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
"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.
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.
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