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Guidelines for GPLv3 Process Released
Justin Baugh writes "The Free Software Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center have released a document detailing the guidelines and the process that will be used for revising the GNU GPL, and have launched a new website related to the V3 process. It was announced in a press release this morning that the FSF will be releasing the first discussion draft of the new license for comments at the International Public Conference for GPLv3 at MIT on January 16 and 17, 2006."
Some people seem to think that clause allows the FSF to release a license that subverts the original ideal behind the GPL. But the new license must be similar in spirit to the current version according to section 9 of the license.
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No, it doesn't mean GPL'd software can't be used in a weapon. It means avoiding unintended consequences that might stifle the freedom of free software development. You'd still be free to make a Linux controlled guided missile.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
The second is that RMS doesn't use the term "open source" to describe "free software". Both are, in practice, loaded terms. Free Software is associated with an ideology RMS himself identifies (and is identified) with strongly. It has baggage in terms of being associated with the right to modify and/or redistribute software you've been given. By comparison, Open Source has baggage too - it's generally associated with the superiority of a development model where anyone can contribute, and the movement to sell this development model to businesses and other professional software developers in the hope it'll encourage the creation of free software. You may feel (and a lot of people would agree with you) that this is a trivial distinction when both, ultimately, refer to software that can be freely modified and redistributed, but RMS is as interested in the baggage as he is the destination, and as such he would distance himself from any comment implying any view of "open source" and what it should be.
Nothing. In fact, you wouldn't even need to modify it. And some people actually fund the development of their Free Software projects by selling copies of their programs with licenses even more liberal than RMS proposes, and do so successfully. OpenBSD uses CD sales as one of a range of funding sources, with grants and gifts from concerned parties who want OpenBSD to provide them with the features they need to be developed. This is actually something the Free Software Foundation used to do with GNU, they'd sell tapes for several hundred dollars containing the latest versions. With the Internet, that became less useful (and not worth several hundred dollars to most people), but for a time it was a good source of funding.You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
We need version 3 because a lot of commercial developers are wary of the version 2 license: cleaning up some of the language and making very clear what it means for the future, along with some minor concessions for wary developers, can encourage them to use the software and participate in its development.
We see this now with Novell and their evolution client, and we've seen copyright vagaries with X-windows, SSH, Kerberos, and other technologies in the past. Good clear language with weird exceptions addressed carefully is the hallmark of OSS.