RMS Previews GPL3 Terms

An anonymous reader writes "In a recent interview, ESR shocked a lot of people when he said, 'We don't need the GPL anymore.' Federico Biancuzzi contacted RMS, founder of the Free Software Movement and initial developer of the GNU system, to talk about the past, the present, and the future of the GNU GPL. Among other things, they discussed the new clauses of the upcoming GPL version 3."

Comments

Re:It's 2005, not 1985.

[Teckla]

GPL is what got Linux this far

With all due respect, that's completely unproven, and in my opinion, completely untrue.

The Apache web server, Mozilla/Firefox, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Python (the language)...the list goes on, and on and on. All of these are very successful projects and (gasp) none of them are licensed under the GPL.

Re:Recognizing the need for the GPL...

[monkeydo]

That doesn't make any sense. The GPL itself limits my freedom. I am not free to modify and redistribute a GPL'd program without distributing the source as well. So, if we follow the logic that it's wrong to violate the GPL because it "tramples other people's freedom", then it is an equally good argument that it isn't wrong to violate the GPL.