FSF Releases Fourth and Final Draft of GPLv3

An anonymous reader writes "The most notable changes found in this latest draft include making GPLv3 compatible with version 2.0 of the Apache license, ensuring that distributors who make discriminatory patent deals after March 28 may not convey software under GPLv3, adding terms to clarify how users can contract for private modification of free software or for a data center to run it for them, and replacing the previous reference to a U.S. consumer protection statute with explicit criteria for greater clarity outside the United States. The draft also does not prohibit Novell from distributing software under GPLv3 'because the patent protection they arranged with Microsoft last November can be turned against Microsoft to the community's benefit,' FSF executive director Peter Brown said."

Comments

Key event in the Microsoft-Linux war

[pieterh]

GPLv3 is a key event in Microsoft's war to divide and conquer the Free Software / Open Source community. Most of the Linux industry seems to be betting on GPLv3 to put an end to Microsoft's patent claims. My question is simply: is Microsoft sitting around scratching its head, or has it already started on the next level of play...? Are we going to see those 235 patents handed over to the community, or are we instead going to see "IP Bridges" as the next great Product to come out of Redmond?

Re:Key event in the Microsoft-Linux war

[morgan_greywolf]

My question is simply: is Microsoft sitting around scratching its head, or has it already started on the next level of play...?

Yes. Microsoft has developed a culture that almost exactly matches that of one of its principle founders, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Bill Gates. As Gates did while playing poker in college, Microsoft always has more than one strategy that it's pursuing. There's almost certainly plan B, and its not going to be pretty.

Are we going to see those 235 patents handed over to the community

No. The '235 patents' are far more valuable if they aren't revealed than if they are. Microsoft knows that if these patents were listed, then various groups including the FSF, EFF, PubPat and others will be challenging the validity of those patents in court. The FAT patent is just the start...

or are we instead going to see "IP Bridges" as the next great Product to come out of Redmond?

The 'next great product' to come out of Redmond will almost certainly be something to either further discredit Free Software / Open Source / Linux. Anything to drive people to Windows and away from Linux and GPL software in particular.

Re:Key event in the Microsoft-Linux war

[sumdumass]

I don't think microsoft has to go that far and can still seriously harm opensource.

I have been talking about this in several areas plus I have notified the FSF itself of the potential. They acknowledged it but didn't seem to care enough to make a change on the portion of the GPL that would allow it. And seeing how this is the final draft, it doesn't appear as if anything will ever be addressed.

My problem revolves around this section of the draft.

A patent license is "discriminatory" if it does not include within the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are specifically granted under this License. You may not convey a covered work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work, and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory patent license (a) in connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you (or copies made from those copies), or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific products or compilations that contain the covered work, unless you entered into that arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28 March 2007.

It seems that the FSF is so mad at Novell for making a deal with microsft they are willing to set up microsoft's final plan for free opensource using the gpl. Now forget all the FUD that can be said about how viral the GPL is, forget that they are going to hold up Novell's treatment as the new boogeyman's stick to scare people and companies away from opensource. forget all that for now, because now they have the ability to let the GPL stop people from distributing it.

Now, lets examine this a little closer, it says, You may not convey a covered work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work, and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory patent license

Microsoft can include an arrangement on this into every single windows license. They can also lay claim to everything you use as falling under this protection. Basically, all they have to do is add or fix a clause into the license for ever windows product you buy that says, "microsoft promises not to sue for the use of pattent or IP related issues in connection with your use of third party software including opensource software covered by the GPL. This activity covers your acts of distributing the said software and extends only to direct to anyone you distribute to but not any further then that. This offer is only valid if you have a valid right to this license agreement and you are not the responsible party placing the disputed IP in the software in question"

Now, anyone who buys microsoft software and clicks the I accept button to install it has basically purposely placed themselves into a position directly spelled out in the GPL and directly effecting your ability to distribute GPLv3 work after this. So lets see who buys Microsoft products, HMMM, almost everyone, Even GPL developers. And more interesting, now these programs that are GPLed and run both in linux and windows, are going to have to quite using the GPLv3 or find another license. Of course there is the option to quit developing for windows. This biggest problem might be all the companies who use microsoft products. The entire participate and all stuff just left the window if they use windows. And microsoft could offer indemnification separately for companies who are fearing lawsuits. It could become an option for an extra $20 on the support contracts they have.

Something even more surprising would be that Dell

Re:Yay freedom!

[pieterh]

What is really, really sad is when people deliberately (or ignorantly) confuse freedom to make life better with freedom to make it worse.

Freedom of expression does not extend to harassment of minorities.

Freedom of movement does not extend to other people's bathrooms.

Freedom of software does not extend to patent ambushes.

Microsoft is cynically exploiting fear of patent infringement to ambush the work done by millions. This is no "pissing war", it is a fight for survival, at least a fight for survival according to the old rules. If Microsoft were respecting the free software community, or even just ignoring it, that'd be fine. But what it's doing is saying, "nice business you have here, Guv, pity you've gone and installed that free stuff everywhere, cause it infringes on our [unspecified] patents, and it'd be a real shame to see a lawsuit happen here..."

Linux is now mainstream, and Microsoft wants to own it. That is what is going on here.

Re:Bleh

[ArwynH]

Considering the people writing the GPL3 are mostly lawyers, no, they don't.

And they can leave the Software writing to us Programmers, thank you.

GPL's goal is freedom, not business friendlyness

[mw13068]

The goal of the GPL, the GNU project, and the FSF has always been software freedom, first and foremost. If a business finds no value in making changes to the way they do things to reap the benefits that Free Software brings, then they are free to not use any GPL'ed software. It's as simple as that.

That said, most of the big businesses currently interested in Free Software, including some which have HUGE patent stores, like IBM have actually participated in the drafting of the GPLv3.

Re:A wake up call

[bentcd]

What is to say the FSF will not add other restrictions on the software you use?

They cannot retroactively add restrictions on their software. It is released under the license it is released under. On the other hand, the usual "GPL v2 or later" wording of the license allows you to adopt later changes should you wish to.

In this case it has mutated to infect unrelated areas of business after entering the host.

No one who is currently using GPLv2 software will see this mutation that you speak of - unless they choose to. People who start to use GPLv3 software will have it marked as GPLv3 when they introduce it so the mutation effect seems somewhat fictional.

Re:Yay freedom!

[squiggleslash]

Freedom is freedom.

Except when it isn't. The problem with freedom is it's an inane word with very little meaning. Ultimately we look to it as an ideal rather than as a goal, because it's very difficult to give everyone absolute freedom when one person can use their's to oppress another, removing the freedom from that second group. Perhaps in a hundred years, when we all have virtual reality, we can have "absolute freedom" within that, with everyone free to do whatever they want to their own words without impacting on anyone else's, but until then others have the right to consider curtailing your freedom the moment your actions involve anyone else.

And that's really the catch- people don't want to admit that linux would ever, ever infringe on Microsoft's patents.

You probably haven't been reading much from those criticizing the use of patents within the community. The reality is that we know full well that it's very, very, likely Linux and other GNU components violate numerous Microsoft patents. We know that it's unfair, because those violations for the most part cover independently invented methods, or code implemented for the purpose of interoperability. Which is why we're (the Free Software community) looking for ways to neutralize deals like Novell's. It's not the notion that Microsoft has patents covering GNU/Linux that bothers us, it's the idea that Microsoft should be allowed to enforce them.

Re:Yay freedom!

[bentcd]

Freedom is freedom. You can't say "oh, well, this is good freedom, so it's all right. That's bad freedom, so we don't like that."

Unless the above is a call for anarchy, then that is exactly what you have to do. This happens to be why we have developed a system of ethics, so that we can judge "good" and "bad" behaviour in a sensible manner.

I don't particularly want anyone to have the freedom to enslave me, so I will tend to campaign to remove the freedom to enslave people. Many people seem to think like me and so, in a largely democratic society, that's the way we tend to go.

If you don't like it, get into politics :-)

Links to the draft, rationale, the Why-to, etc.

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

Would it have killed them to link to the actual draft and documents? Here are the links:

• FSFE's GPLv3 information page
• GPLv3 discussion draft 4
• An essay by RMS: Why Upgrade to GPL Version 3
• The rationale document of the changes

Re:GPL's goal is freedom, not business friendlynes

[mw13068]

business *is* on board. IBM, Nokia, Sun, and many others participated in the drafting of the GPLv3. They probably don't care much about the whole "freedom" aspect, but they find that Free Software is great for their bottom line.

My point is that the authors of the license care more about end-user freedom than about whether XYZ inc. will like the license or not. And that is as it should be.

Re:How to scare away business

[FireFury03]

what if the software is designed specifically to perform a piece of CAM in a way that's patented? Would that patent become invalid because of this licence?

The licence doesn't render your patents invalid. It simply prevents you from suing anyone for patent infringement if the code that infringes your patent was published by you.

This makes a lot of sense - why would you publish the source code for something if you didn't want people to be able to use it? If you are publishing the source code which does something you've patented and you don't protect people then there really is no point publishing the code in the first place since it is illegal for someone to use it.

Why risk losing millions in licence fees when you could spend a few hundred thousand and fit your systems with software you know doesn't rob you these rights?

Why publish source code which could give your competetors an advantage? Clearly publishing code works because you gain an advantage too. Whilest you are potentially helping your competetors, any improvements they make to the code will come back to benefit you.

This is a very difficult balancing act - on the one hand it's very good for the customers since it forces all the vendors to continually improve their offerings. It's also very good for the vendors since they effectively get thousands of man-hours of work without directly paying for those developers. But on the other hand, it means that the vendor has to put a lot of resources into the project in order to continually improve it - they are never going to get into a situation where they have cornered the market and can lock everyone else out and relax like Microsoft has done over the past few years.

So to answer your question - you can risk losing millions in licence fees because in return for that risk you might also get licenses from other people worth millions.

Not sure I buy the Novell comment

[jimicus]

From the summary:

The draft also does not prohibit Novell from distributing software under GPLv3 'because the patent protection they arranged with Microsoft last November can be turned against Microsoft to the community's benefit,' FSF executive director Peter Brown said." Quite correct. But that doesn't quite work if the deal with Microsoft says "this agreement is exclusive". In that case, the only way Novell can abide by that is to distribute nothing under GPLv3, and very possibly nothing under "GPLv2 or later".

I can't see any other reading of this. Which raises the question: what were Novell smoking when they signed the deal? If Microsoft predicted this kind of clause in GPLv3 (which you can be fairly sure they did), they essentially tricked Novell into signing a contract saying "We're going to stop distributing the very software which is core to our business" and Novell went on record saying how great this contract is.

I have a lot of trouble believing that. In which case, exactly what patent protection does this contract provide?

Seriously, what is wrong with you people?

[Anonymous Coward]

First off... The GPLv3 license's primary goal is to make it more compatable with other licenses.

Second off... the FSF/GNU folks are usually pretty easy-going when it comes to relicensing software for other people to use, if they have a good reason to. There are a number of projects that have given out GPL'd code under a different license for compatability reasons.

Ever try to get somebody from Apache project to relicense code for you? IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. They are much more hardcore, beuracratic, and nasty about this then the GNU folks.

It's like your seeing the world inside-out or something.

Your taking a person like RMS whose primary purpose in life, something he has devoted pretty much every minute of his waking life, is for the freedom of software users everywere. And you act like it's HIM that wants to control YOU.

It's so much bullshit that it makes me want to puke, get your head out of your ass.

Not everybody wants to devote their lives to making software that you can turn around and use to extract fees from the clueless masses. The GPL is about liberation, moving away from restrictive software licenses, not about making other people rich.