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Moglen's Plans to Upgrade the GPL

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the keeping-pace-with-the-times dept.

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."

4 of 411 comments (clear)

  1. upgrades. by k4_pacific · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    Unknown host pong.
  2. Re:Hopefully good will come out of this. by Xpilot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Re:I can't see this helping... by NemosomeN · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

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    I hate grammar Nazi's.