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."

Comments

Still a bit wary of one element of the GPL

[GauteL]

.. namely the one in which you grant permission for your software to be distributed according to any future version of the GPL. I do know you are not required to include this clause, but both decisions can have consequences.

Without it, it can be hard for the licensing to adapt to new requirements if not all the copyright owners can be found.

With it, you are at the mercy of the Free Software Foundation, when it comes to new versions of the GPL. I trust the FSF completely not to have any hidden motives, but it still might be that a future version of the GPL does not suit you.

A clause of "NAME OF FOUNDER OF PROJECT is free to upgrade this license to any future version of the GPL at his/her discretion" might be a better idea. This way, you CAN switch to new versions of the GPL even though you have thousands of contributors each with individual copyright on bits of the code, but you can also refuse to license the software under a future version of the GPL if it is not in your interest.

Re:Still a bit wary of one element of the GPL

[Kjella]

A clause of "NAME OF FOUNDER OF PROJECT is free to upgrade this license to any future version of the GPL at his/her discretion" might be a better idea. This way, you CAN switch to new versions of the GPL even though you have thousands of contributors each with individual copyright on bits of the code, but you can also refuse to license the software under a future version of the GPL if it is not in your interest.

Not to get overly philsophical, but did my patch join your program, or did your program join my patch? Copyright considers it a derivative work of both, and the concept of a "founder" doesn't exist in the legal sense. Every time you took a piece of code from another project, you would have to ask them to relicense it to acknowledge you as the founder. In many cases it makes no sense at all, because an application and a library wouldn't have any reason to recognize each other as founders. You would have to end up with an LGPLish upgrade clause in the GPL, which would be a total mess. Also, one of the fundamental freedoms of the GPL is to fork the code, and the initial founder may not at all represent the current developers of the code. If you want that kind of control, make it one of the requirements for contributing. Basicly, instead of assigning copyright, just assign a limited right to release under future GPL versions (which you could also do today with GPLv2, but I don't know of anyone that does). I think that the same people who distrust FSF the will also distrust your project, and retain all relicensing rights for their own judgement so I don't think it would work if you tried.

Re:Still a bit wary of one element of the GPL

[T-Ranger]

While interesting, you would have to have a bunch of clauses in how that right can (and eventually, in the case of death, must) be transfered to a different individual, or orginaztion.

This would complicate the GPL, potentialy making it no longer international in nature. At the very least it would make it more difficult to understand for "normal people" which is, I think, a quality of the current revision(s).

It is more-or-less this scenario that explains why some projects (usualy those sponsored by a commercial entity which also makes a closed version (Hula/Novell comes to mind)), requires transfer of copyright to that project, rather then just submsion of code under the GPL. In other words this problem can be (and frequently is) solved outside of the GPL proper.

Re:Still a bit wary of one element of the GPL

[burndive]

If I add to your GPL'd code to improve the product, and release my modifications back to your branch of the product, I still own the copyright to what I wrote. You can't change the lisence for my code because you aren't the copyright holder, even if it has very little meaning outside the context of your project.

That's what this whole discussion is about: the best way to implement an upgradable lisence structure without requiring every single contributor's involvment.

If the lisence to the code states that it can be released under any future GPL, then you don't need my further consent to update the lisence, but that requires quite a bit of faith in whoever controls the GPL in the future.

Who would of thought

[Anonymous Coward]

that giving away software for free would be a complex world full of politics and self-appointed American rule makers squabbling over who writes the best rules and who can make a simple task as complex as possible

Re:Who would of thought

[LiquidCoooled]

The GPL is not giving your code away for free.

The GPL is a license to ensure that your code and other code built using it remains open and usable by others.

Just giving the code away for free would allow an evil company to take somebodies hard work and lock it up in an exe shell with a squad of lawyers protecting the source.

Public Domain is noble but not wise.

Re:New Clause

[maxwell demon]

If you consider the license text to be part of the documentation, that requirement would at the same time be its own fulfillment :-)

Re:Increasingly Irrelevant

[frankm_slashdot]

its a world of choice - if you have that much of a problem with gpl then dont use it. just because you dont like it doesnt mean others shouldnt be freely allowed to use it if they like. natural selection will sort it all out in the end - who are you to play god?

the future isnt about narrowing down our choices to only one style of license - its about broadening them. to some companies, real - money driven - licenses make sense. others it doesnt. you'll be ok. i promise.

Re:Stupid question...

[meringuoid]

A video game is a prime example. It takes a long time to write a good game but you can only sell it for $35-$50. You could make the game engine open source and still be blessed by RMS. RMS for some reason things that it is fine for the "content" of a video game not be open source. I have no idea why he feels that way.

RMS is a hacker. RMS thinks the innovative 3D engine in Quake is really cool, and wants to be able to play around with it to see what else he can make it do. He wants to create new things based on Quake: I recall, once the source was released, there was a mod that made Quake into a flight sim, another that gave you a warped fish-eye view, there was ttyQuake which was just deeply wrong, there were ports of Quake to every machine that would sit still long enough...

But RMS doesn't give a damn about the levels iD happened to provide along with Quake - why should he? To a hacker, they're irrelevant. Suppose Microsoft were to say 'right, you can have the code to the Windows kernel, NTFS, SMB, the Word and Excel file formats, all under GPL. But the fonts, sound effects and wallpapers, those we're keeping.' Well, who cares? We can create our own fonts and wallpapers, dammit...

Re:Stupid question...

[trollable]

My company is developing some software that we will release as OSS. I doubt that we will use GPLv.3.

Depends if you can wait 'til Spring 2007 ;)

I think it goes too far.

How far? There is not even a public draft. Do you mean GPLv2?

And I don't like that the FSF can change it anytime in the future.

They can't. Once the text is out, it is definitive.