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."

Comments

Dear Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

In the future, please warn when linking to audio files.

Re:Biggest Change

[bcmm]

IMHO this is a very good move. It's a sad thing, but no one knows or cares what DRM is. However, everyone cares if his/her computer won't do what he or she wants. This makes it much easier for a normal person to understand things. Including a plain language explanation is an important strength of this license.

Re:What Constitutes Distribution

[Just Some Guy]

I may be an OSSer, but I have nothing against commercial code, per se. How about this?: choose the set of rules you wish to operate under. If you want to keep the code closed to make money, pay money for your code base. If you wish to use GPLed code, pay for it with GPLed code.

I have to disagree with you on this one. I'm not convinced that transmitting the output of, say, phpBB2 is the same as distributing the source of phpBB2. If I install it and modify a page, should I be obligated to make my patch available to anyone who views that page? That's not a rhetorical question, by the way, but a real issue that the GPLv3 introduces.

The same could be said of any other GPLv3ed software that uses some kind of templating system to generate output. Word processors, code generators, database frontends, drawing programs: those all incorporate parts of themselves into their end products. Should graphics drawn with The GIMP be GPL because they contain circles made by The GIMP's copyrighted code? If not, then what's the fundamental difference between The GIMP and phpBB that should restrict the output of one and not the other?

I apologize if this comes off like a troll, but I'm really curious. I don't understand this viewpoint but would be interested in seeing it logically supported.