Slashdot Mirror
GPLv3 Second Discussion Draft Released
thppft! writes "The second discussion draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 was released, along with the first discussion draft of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Along with the text for the licenses , the GPLv3 website also includes an introduction by Eben Moglen along with markup changes to the rationale and the GPL itself."
After my submission was rejected, I figured another submission based on this story was in the queue, so I put the below links together:
Four transcripts which include the post-talk Q&A sessions from presentations by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen:
And two very useful docs:
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
If you are looking for more that fsfeurope's plain text diff, FSF is providing a strikethrough version of this second Draft, that highlights all the changed text from Draft 1, in LaTex, Postscript, and PDF
Looking through the new draft, they've made major improvements to the wording of things, which is good because in the first version the prose was thicker than molasses. Specifically, the part about releasing the keys necessary to run the source (the TIVO clause) is much clearer and easier to understand.
The other changes seem to be patching holes in the logic that might have allowed someone to get around the GPL.
Qxe4
And gcc. And Gnome. And all the GNU utilities. ANd thats only the list of things I've used in the past 15 minutes or so.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The word DRM and the phrase Digital Restrictions Mangement no longer appear in the document. Instead they define a clause called "No Denying Users' Rights through Technical Measures" which is basically the new anti-DRM clause.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
The provision in the first draft was that if a project implemented a feature that had a command to download the source code, the web service provider had to keep this in-tact, otherwise, there was no requirement. In other words, it is completely up to the OSS project devs whether this requirement is present or not. Which is reasonable.
One of the things that was discussed regarding the GPL v3 was adding a provision that made web services considered distribution that would require eleasing [sic] the source as per the GPL...
The short story is that this definition of distribution (distribution is now called "conveying" in license language) has been rejected by the FSF and does not appear by default in this draft of GPL3.
The longer story: Some web services projects do want to include a link to allow users to download source, and they do want to limit server administrators from removing this capability. To appease this group, the FSF has added an optional license provision that forbids removal of such a feature. I repeat, this is an optional license feature that takes effect if and only if a given project explicitly activates it.
I suspect that you are right and that most web service providers will not want to use up resources with users downloading web service source. So, I suspect that the market will cause any such projects to diminish in popularity. The important thing to note is that the FSF is not forcing this notion of distribution on any project using the GPLv3.
On a related note, the GPLv3 drafts Section 7b contains a list of optional license restrictions (including the above mentioned restriction) that are permissible. All of these restrictions are things that the FSF does not believe are necessary to maintain a Free program, but that the FSF acknowledges won't seriously harm user freedom if individual projects choose to activate them. Mostly, this list is provided to improve the GPLv3's compatibility with other Free Software licenses which contain equivalent restrictions but are incompatible with GPLv2. This attempt at license compatibility with other Free Software licenses is a big improvement for the GPL.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
I had to forget something. Here's a transcript of comments by Alan Cox.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Yes, you're right that copyright law doesn't cover use. However, you DO have to have a license to modify the code as well, irregardless of whether you distribute it. As soon as the webmaster modifies the code for use in his web app, he must comply with the GPL. By removing that code that implements this feature, he is modifying the code outside of the terms of the GPL, and thus in violation.
Remember, copyright law places limitations not only on distribution, but also on modification and creation of derivitive works, even if there is no distribution of those modified works. So that is how this clause works. If you made a derivitive of Windows for internal use without Microsoft's permission, you would be infringing their copyright, unless you had a license to do so.
Linux Watch has published some comments from Linus.
FUD. RTFL.
Works created using GPL'd software, not containing the source or object code, explicitly do NOT fall under the license. Most programming language runtimes are licensed with a special exception to allow programs to run without falling under the GPL.
MySQL owns the code they dual license. They're free to under it under whatever terms they like. Same for Trolltech and many others. If they decide to go to GPLv3 that won't affect their ability to offer the same code under a different license at all. In fact, I suspect they'll be in a hurry to switch to v3, as to whatever degree it's more restrictive of commercial use (I don't think it is at all, but that seems to be the impression people are getting, and in business perception is often more important than reality) that would just make it more likely that companies buy their commercial license rather than using it for free under the GPL.
The Apache and (modified) BSD licenses in common usage are one-way compatible to GPL v2. That will remain true with v3.
Honestly, most of the changes people are focusing on are inconsequential. For the most part v3 just clarifies things that are already in v2. Even tivoisation is probably illegal under v2, v3 just makes it absolutely clear so that they copyright holders will no longer have the prospect of a long and expensive court case to prove it.
The one really scary clause in v3 seems to be the one that everyone overlooks. The license termination clause looks rather toothless in comparison to GPL2, and, outside of the guy that runs the GPL violations web site, no one seems to be paying much attention to that.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The idea of this requirement is to stop the client from having to differentiate itself to the server. So in this case, the client could (at your - the user's - option) send the same user agent string, or not. It's up to you.
The point is to prevent people from putting out GPL systems that implement DRM client-executable authentication. An example would be if the client was required to transmit a SHA1 hash of its executable image to the server, and the server then decided whether to give you the page or not based on that.
For such a system to pass the GPLv3 requirements, then the correct SHA1 hash for the version the server wants to talk to has to be included along with the source code, and the source code, when you build it, has to send that hash instead of a real hash. In other words, it has to keep working when you build your own copy, even if you change it.
This requirement basically forbids that sort of thing entirely. You can give a hash, and the server can respond to that hash, but it can't be a secret hash. This is the sort of thing DRM systems sometimes do to make sure you can't access your data. For example, games like WoW and EQ do things like this to prevent you from using a GPLed game client.
So, if I used a GPLed programming language to make my website, must I offer the full source to that language? What if I use GPLed software to generate a movie, then put it on the web? Now, what if I use GPLed software to generate a random file, then put it on the web? What if that file is html? Where's the line?
Mmmmmm!!! Delicious FUD cakes! Straight from Bullshit Lane Bakeries.
The GPL has never, will never, and can never cover the generated output of any GPL'ed program. This can only occur in the mind of a poor deluded fool, such as yourself. The GPL covers only the source code, and binaries generated from the source code. Not, I repeat, not binaries generated from the binaries, or anything else they might produce.
As for a "GPL'ed programming language", I don't even know what the hell that's supposed to mean. Languages exist independantly of the programs that interpret them, in theory at least. Language symantics cannot be copyrighted anymore than mathematical relationships can.
May the Maths Be with you!
Oh, joy. Now, when trying to use multiple open source projects, we can't even assume that two GPLv3 projects have compatible licenses. "libAardvark is GPLv3 with restrictions 4, 7, and 19, and gLlamaBoy is GPLv3 with restrictions 1, 8, and 21-36. We'll have to rewrite one of them."
Remember, any GPLvX code can automatically be linked to any other GPLvX code (although not necessarily to GPLvX-1 code). The allowable optional restrictions of section 7b do not impose contradictory burdens (that is, option 2 does not contradict option 3, etc) nor do they really add significant burdens to the vanilla GPLv3 (with the exception of 7.b.4 which is the web services option and the one everyone is still up in arms about). They are just minor differences in effect and the purpose of Section 7 is to allow modules with such minor licensing differences to be linked.
In fact, not only is the purpose of this section to allow you to link code under all permutations of the GPLv3, it also allows you to link GPLv3 code to various Free Software licenses that were not previously linkable due to minor wording differences or patent retaliation clauses. In fact, the controversial 7.b.4 section was to allow linking with the Affero Free Public License. The big debate should not just be whether 7.b.4 is okay, but also whether the Affero Free Public License is really a Free license.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
The one really scary clause in v3 seems to be the one that everyone overlooks. The license termination clause looks rather toothless in comparison to GPL2, and, outside of the guy that runs the GPL violations web site, no one seems to be paying much attention to that.
The draft 2 clarification seems to make it better. The license says that the copyright holder has 60 days from the date of last violation to put the violator on notice. In cases of accidental violation, this means that if you fix the violation, a copyright holder can't come along 2 years later and say, "You were non-compliant 2 years ago, so your license terminated." Under the GPLv2, that situation could potentially happen (although to my knowledge, it hasn't yet).
In situations of continual and/or deliberate violation, the 60 day limit would by definition be a rolling deadline, so the copyright holder could notify the violator, then terminate the license accordingly. The provision for termination under this case certainly is not "toothless".
I don't see how this differs significantly from the GPLv2. It just provides a little shield for distributors who accidentally violated the GPL, but then fixed their violation and stayed clean afterward.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
The FSF, however, has relicensed those parts of bison under a permissive license so that today you can use the output in any shape or form (including in proprietary programs).