Slashdot Mirror
GPL v3 Coming Out in 2007?
gentoo1337 writes "Eben Moglen of the FSF speaks out in this ZDNet article, noting that GPL v3 may be publicly drafted in early 2006, and in force one year later. The process is very sensitive (noting concerns of forking in the Linux world), but Eben Moglen is optimistic: 'When it's all over, people are going to say, "All that talking for just that much change?" [...] We will do no harm. If we think (some change) may have any unintended consequences, we will not recommend making it.' Controversies aside, there is some good news -- Richard Stallman aims to 'lower barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.' The earlier Slashdot discussion contains complementary info about the intentions of FSF."
Being that 99 44/100% of all GPL'd software originally came out under the current GPL, will there be any version conflicts with currently licensed software? I.e. if the newer license is *less* restrictive on some point, can existing software licensing be "upgraded" to the new license without have to obtain the acceptance of every single contributor?
P.S. This is a real question, not a flamebait or troll...
Sorry for sounding pedantic, but he announced this at the FSF associate members meeting March 26th. I'm surprised nobody came out with this info earlier.
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
I was in Eben's talk. The following sentence from the summary is a but unclear:
lower barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.
What RMS means by this is compatibility with other Free software licenses (such as hopefully the Apache license), rather than compromise with proprietary software.
Right now GPLv2 pays lipservice to patents but doesn't really have strong sanctions against companies who use them to quash free software. The provisions it has are weak and arguably unenforceable if the company distributing GPL'd software suddenly decides to cease.
Nokia, for example, may be able to get away with deciding to end its distribution of GNU/Linux, then suing anyone who's made a derivative version that violates a patent of their's in a way that versions they shipped didn't. Indeed, it's quite possible that a third party entering new code that infringes upon a Nokia patent, even today, could be stopped by Nokia.
(If anyone thinks I'm being unfair to Nokia, yes, unless they actually do this, then I am being, but at the same time they put out a very, very, guarded comment a few months ago that quite obviously left these scenarios open.)
What many people want to see is companies that use patents against free software unable to use a large body of free software from there on. That means a solution to the above issue, but also to, say, discourage suing in general by ensuring that if a company chooses to deny the use of a patented technology to one free software project, it chooses to deny itself the use of any. So if IBM sues to get a technology out of, let's say, Apache, it can't turn around and continue to distribute a (theoretically GPLv3'd) Linux kernel.
Software patents were not a serious problem when the first two GPLs were drafted, though I believe they existed by the time the second version was created. They are now, and they pose a serious threat to free software.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Am I the only one who's tired of hearing that GPL v3 is coming real soon now? What's the use in talking about it if there are no drafts to discuss?
(Obligatory: I wonder if Duke Nukem Forever for the Phantom console will be licensed under GPL v3...)
Yeah, heaven forbid that the users of the GPL would have any say in how it works.
All I want is the ability to declare public and private interfaces for GPL products, where public interfaces can be used with any type of license and private interfaces are off-limits unless you're a GPL project.
All you have to do is distribute your program under the GPL, and provide a file saying "you are granted the rights to redistribute under the GPL, however you also are granted the right to link against this program and redistribute freely so long as you do so only via the interfaces declared in public_interface.h."
It is as simple as that. The Linux Kernel, as it happens, does almost exactly this.
Another option is that you could put some parts of your program (the "private" parts) under the GPL and other parts (the "public" parts) under the LGPL. I have seen programs that did exactly this.
The GPL does not restrict rights. It only grants them. As the copyright holder, you are of course free to grant as many other rights as you want in addition to the GPL rights. Of course, you can't speak for any other copyright holders that may have provided material in the program...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You don't need any license to use a GPL'd program. You only need a license if you want to redistribute it.
The reason you need the license to redistribute the computer program is because copyright law says you have no right to do so otherwise.