FSF Releases Third Draft of GPLv3

johnsu01 writes "The Free Software Foundation has announced publication of the third discussion draft of the GNU General Public License Version 3. Because quite a few changes have been made since the previous draft and important new issues have surfaced, the drafting process has been extended and revised to encourage more feedback. The most significant changes in this draft include refinements in the "tivoization" provisions to eliminate unwanted side effects, revision of the patent provisions to prevent end-runs around the license, and further steps toward compatibility with other free software licenses. The FSF has also explicitly asked the community whether the new patent provisions should apply retroactively to the Microsoft-Novell deal."

Comments

Can they do that?

[venicebeach]

The FSF has also explicitly asked the community whether the new patent provisions should apply retroactively to the Microsoft-Novell deal

Is that really an option? Wouldn't that be changing the terms of the license (v2) after it was distributed and agreed to? I don't understand how they can affect the Novell deal without going through the trouble of upgrading Linux to GPLv3-- and even then Novell should be able to use old Linux released under GPLv2, no?

Re:Can they do that?

[Bruce Perens]

I'm going to have to correct myself. The specific sentence in square brackets, which means it's proposed but not accepted, would exempt anyone who has made a Novell-Microsoft-like agrement before today from enforcement of the terms even on GPL3 software. So, FSF is really asking "should we let Novell and Microsoft off, and just apply this to future violators?" I don't think they'll do that.

Bruce

Reaction to GPLv3

[Experiment 626]

I'm curious how the adoption of GPLv3 will play out. The kernel is going to stay at v2 for the foreseeable future, so the new version will mostly apply to the GNU tool chain. There are enough companies out there who like the loopholes of v2 (TiVo, SuSE, etc.), will they maintain a fork of the code that stays licensed under v2, perhaps individually, perhaps as a collective effort amongst those with reason to balk at v3? Another possibility is to just keep on using versions of the code that were released under v2. Some things, like /bin/ls, really don't change enough that everyone will feel compelled to step up to the latest version. On the other hand, if the GNU software the company depends on is gcc, staying at a particular release and not having support for new processor technologies in your compiler would start to become problematic after a while.

So, how do you guys think the companies for whom adopting GPLv3 would eliminate loopholes will react to the new license? Somehow, I don't think they will just all go, "Oh, so that's how you intended Free Software to be used. We will play nicely from now on."

Adoption?

[Bruce Perens]

I don't think they have to worry about adoption. They have all of the FSF-owned software going to GPL3, which means that you can't really make a distribution without accepting GPL3. And most likely things like Samba, MySQL, Solaris and other Sun offerings, essentially anything owned by people who don't want the trick that Novell and Microsoft pulled to apply to them. I think that will be a lot of people. In the end, it might even be the kernel team. But that will take 1 to 2 years to play out.

Bruce

Re:"retroactively" was just a bad choice of word

[Bruce Perens]

It's an attempt, sure. It's a noble effort even, and I'm as opposed to software patents as the next developer who works on GPLed software for a living. But I think that it is a failed attempt.

It's based on the principle: we must all hang together or we will surely hang separately.

Bruce

Re:"retroactively" was just a bad choice of word

[g2devi]

Yes. You're correct. I still have the early Computer Languages (or was it Dr. Dobbs?) magazine article where they interviewed Stallman about the newly released Free Software Manifesto. The tone of the article portrayed Stallman as being a Don Quixote-like idealists that had little chance of succeeding (after all, everything was proprietary and the moment you make something free like in the 60s someone will come along and make it proprietary again). But he was looked at favourably in the same way that kindly and generous old grandfather that's out of touch with reality is.

Things have definitely changed since that day, but the threat of finding loopholes in the GPL to lock it up again and return us to the 1980s still remains. It remains to be seen of the GPLv3 helps or hinders free software (it has to maintain a fine balance between pragmatism and idealism). But at least the "additional permissions" feature of getting the GPL to be more compatible with other licenses (and reduce license fragmentation) and the Novell-Microsoft patent feature are definite improvements.