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GPL 3 Launch Date Announced
Joe Blakesley writes "Today, the Free Software Foundation announced that version 3 of the GNU General Public License will be released on Friday, June 29 at noon (EDT). Live video footage of the GPL's unveiling by Richard M. Stallman will be available as a stream on the FSF's website."
GPL v3 + iPhone in one day = collective nerdgasm?
Who'll be watching? They'll all be queued up at the Apple store to buy into the hysteria.
"Let's do it on June 29, the same day the iPhone comes out! No one will be watching! YEAH!"
Does the FSF often do video streaming? Are there any video streaming methods/codecs/packages that are are sufficiently `free' for the FSF's tastes, and are installed already on enough systems that somebody might be able to view it?
I submitted this and am intrigued by why ScuttleMonkey has made one change to the story as submitted: moving the link to the announcement from the word "announce" to the date (which isn#t even the date of the announcement). Bizarre.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
I can't wait!
I mean, it isn't a physical object. Print it out and frame it? Throw copies into the crowd? A reading by Stallman himself (followed by a license signing)?
I'll be reloading the FSF webpage way in advance hoping to be one of the first in my block to download a copy of GPL 3.0
..it's going to be a long wait .. but worth it.
I have already bought hot pockets and red bulls
Richard Stallman and the Deadly Hallows!
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Excellent news!
I'm curious about when Sun plans to GPL 3 Java, OpenSolaris, along with ZFS, DTrace, and hopefully NetBeans.
This space left intentionally blank.
I am working on code using QT 4. Will I be able to release that code under the GPL3? Or will QT have to re-release it under GPL3 first?
And the FSF unveiling GPL v.3 online on the same day Apple is unveiling its iPhone in at&t stores everywhere furthers the goals of Free Software how?
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
I'm going to wait for SP1 before I upgrade.
Gotta update my tattoo, Which was the GPL-2, But from the looks of v3, Should be hours of agony!
technical writing / development
The one where if you modify software that had a "web distribution function" (from my recollection, an optional function within web-based software that enables a remote user to obtain the source code), and then run the modified program on your website, you are required to disclose all changes even if you don't distribute the software?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That is the Affero GPL, a separate license.
Bruce Perens.
"It is reported that the unveiling speech will include the words "Sic Semper Tyrannis""
There are some things in the GPLv3 that will eventually blow up on them, doing this to hide the publicity amongst the Apple fanfare is just par for the course.
You seem to be implying that Stallman is announcing this on June 29th so he can hide behind the big iPhone rollout. I haven't met Stallman in person, but nothing I've heard indicates that he would ever try to hide one of his announcements. He has a lot of ego invested in the GPL. My guess is he's deliberately announcing it on June 29th because he'll be able to leverage the iPhone launch. I could see him calling attention to the iPhone and the perils of hardware companies and content providers limiting our options.
He's going to try and pull a judo move on the 29th.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It isn't in the license by default. It is a restriction that can be added; this was done for compatibility with the Affero GPL.
No, they dropped that from the later drafts of GPLv3. The FSF recently released a draft of the Affero GPL, which at first glance is pretty much the same as GPLv3, except that it does have the web distribution clause. From the FSF rationale documents, it sounds like they thought it tricky to get right, and probably thought they'd rather get GPLv3 out first and worry about the Affero part later.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I wonder if they can stream his smell, or is that too technologically advanced even for us?
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Just sayin...
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Does GPL REALLY mean anything to the end user, apart from a click on the "I Agree" button during an install? Maybe I'm the odd one out, or maybe I'm just stating the bloody obvious, but the license could say that I agree to serve up my firstborn to the dark-lord and I'd still click on "I Agree" just to get the app installed! The amount of waffle and nit-picking over the wording and terms of GPL v3 has me somewhat at a loss... Maybe I should actually try reading a license agreement sometime? Sheesh, but why break the habit of a lifetime?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But you don't seem to realize why RMS differs. So do compare that ESR essay to "Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software" which, among other things, asks you to consider what is being proposed by the two movements and to give each movement their due. The free software movement isn't just about making software (in fact a lot of people in the free software community aren't programmers at all). The way you frame the issue, it seems that everyone getting along is fine so long as we all choose to call everything "open source" and toss aside the pursuit of freedom and social solidarity that are at the heart of the free software movement (and which the open source movement was built not to talk about).
Digital Citizen
If you have a GPL tattoo, do you get any women by claiming "Hey baby! Derivative works are free!"
:]
Yeah, I really didn't think so...
Linus Torvalds didn't write today's entire Linux kernel either, he has long aggregated portions of the kernel from plenty of contributors. Credit for creation of software isn't going to get you anywhere in this debate. RMS initially wrote GNU EMACS, GDB, and GCC, three incredibly influential and useful programs among many others. RMS wrote GCC for freedom; it's not much of a stretch to infer he wrote other GNU programs for freedom as well. Yet under the specious creation argument all of RMS' work deserves no credit for GNU and we're supposed to call the entire operating system consisting of GNU running with the Linux kernel "Linux" thus granting exclusive credit to a project egotistically named after its initial author, Linus Torvalds (and thus bringing to mind Torvalds' politics). I think the GNU/Linux naming FAQ adequately addresses every argument which ultimately results in denying GNU even a fair share of credit.
Digital Citizen
they want there joke back
question is: where does jobs fit in?
Snape kills Dumbledore.
Two people with birthdays on June 29 - thus proving Slashdot has 730 (and a half) users.
Things necessary for the world to implode:
Richard Stallman will start using Vista cause it looks kewl
Apple will go back to PowerPC cause of all the people stealing MacOS (see: kext)
George Bush will physically launch himself at the evildoers in a selfless act of courage
Microsoft will sue everyone, everywhere, for everything. Its all MS property Bitches.
Ok that last one shouldn't be filed away yet nevermind carry on your safe for now
they want the joke back
One view on Tivoization can be found here:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/17/303
(Yes, it's Linus Torvalds saying that he thinks Tivoization is *good*.)
Interestingly, it could be argued that "Tivoization" would provide a solution to issues of controversy around "Diebold" voting mahines. I'm not in the US, but I get the impression (from posts here and elsewhere) that these machines aren't particularly trusted! One solution to "trust" would be to make the underlying code viewable, but not changeable (presumably by some form of TiVo-like "locking"). It could then be audited, but not "hacked".
But not with GPLv3 code! Oh well, I suppose there is always BSD!
Sesostris III
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
Open source is about having the freedom to make and share software for free.
Free software is about socialism.
How can you unveil something that's been through a year of public drafting?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you want to use software, you must have software to use. If you want to have software to use, there must be a way to develop it. The GPL has been the "Constitution" enabling the development of a vast amount of really useful software; indeed, the majority of Free-libre / open source software (FLOSS) uses the GPL. And people are finally realizing that most FLOSS is commercial software; it's no longer exclusively "just a hobby". Before the GPL, the only ways of creating software were complete proprietary control (often by a company intent on preventing you from switching) or public domain/BSDish licenses (which sometimes works very well, but sometimes get sucked into proprietary projects often enough to die or live only on life support). So yes, if you wish to be able to use software in the future, the GPL is important; it establishes a viable method of making the software that people would like to use. In fact, it's been extraordinarily effective at doing so.
Even you don't write code yourself, you can still hire someone to write or change code. So the GPL provides additional capabilities to users, even if the user can't write code him/herself. And even if you use proprietary software, GPL'ed software has had a profound impact on limiting the costs of much of that software, which is also great for end-users (and again matters to them).
Here's an analogy - that statement is like saying that agriculture doesn't matter because many people aren't farmers. But non-farmers must eat too! Having viable methods to grow food - and a competitive system to lower costs and raise quality - are still of vital interest to the users of products from farmers. Unless you want to stop eating.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
There *were* C compilers before GCC, and they weren't part of expensive toolchains - you did need a Unix(tm) license to run some of them, but the output didn't have a public virus attached. I'm not saying this to diss the gcc - it was a really valuable tool, and because it was open source it was much easier to port it for other platforms (whether you did that yourself or paid Cygnus to do it), and it was the basis for the compilers for many of the Unix machines of the time.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
But the environment I'm actually running as a user isn't the classic GNU's Not Unix set of user interfaces, with emulations of command-line tools that have longer-named options to manage the feature creep. I'm usually using X Windows, with one of several graphical window managers, and when I'm running a shell, it's usually bash (because ksh usually isn't installed), but I'm spending most of that time in vi and Mail, which are BSD tools, not GNU. And Mozilla's open source covered by GPL, but isn't a FSF project, though sometimes I'll be using Konqueror, which appears to have a rather varied licensing history.
Some years I've run emacs as my primary editor, and I still use emacs-mode in my shell just to keep the finger memory working, but back when I was using it regularly I was usually on SunOS
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This must be what they mean by "GPL3 is an open sores license".
I'm hoping the whole linux community flocks quickly to the latest version of freedom, the gpl3.
And how is RMS incorrect in his assessment in that essay? You sarcastically say it's "great" and namecall ("Looks like someone is trapped in a small monkeysphere.") but you don't explicate how RMS is incorrect. Finally, it's hard to say RMS is polarizing anything when the open source movement came later and argued that dismissing freedom out of hand is preferable to defending software freedom.
Digital Citizen
The open source movement has nothing to do with framing anything in terms of a computer user's freedom or liberty. The language "open source" was purposefully chosen to get away from freedom talk. The open source movement focuses on a developmental methodology designed to appeal chiefly to software businesses. You can see the effect of the open source wedge movement where people have taken that movement's bait by accusing anyone talking about software freedom of "monopolization" of terms and not going along with dismissing freedom in favor of pursuing business ends (such as faster, cheaper, and less buggy software). Incident after incident shows that we are wise to look out for our own interests and to organize politically in order to make life better for ourselves; we can do this while allowing businesses to stay in business so long as they don't restrict our freedom. But business interests should remain subordinate to the interests of democratic control.
Digital Citizen
The FSF does NOT predate open source, this is false. Perhaps you're confusing with the OSI?
Open source' includes a lot of pre-FSF history like the early IETF and the Tech Model Railroad Club. Opinions vary, but a lot of people refer to 1961, the year MIT took delivery of the first PDP-1 and the earliest group of self-described 'hackers' coalesced around it.
Open source is the inclusive term for the entirety of a history and a culture that transcends any of our narrow internecine disputes about licensing and propaganda. Neither the FSF nor the OSI is the axis of that history.
Our community didn't spring full-blown from Linus Torvalds's head, nor from Richard Stallman's. It includes 'free software' developers, but also tribes like those around BSD and X that are not centered on the GPL and rejected the term 'free software' with all its ideological baggage. And it includes many more to whom the GPL/anti-GPL dispute matters only a little if at all.
I for one think the GPL freedomology-rap and redefinition for their own purposes, is pure decadence from people completely disconnected from real issues of freedom, poverty and war in the world.
Do you always begin your discussions so harshly, drawing sweeping generalizations (which are bound to be untrue) about people? Is it really impossible that I could have misspoken where many thousands of free software activists have not?
The OSI takes credit for "inventing the 'open source' label" (which I take to mean using the term "open source" in this context) on February 3, 1998 at a "strategy session [...] in Palo Alto, California". Like you, they too try to extend their influence to cover a wide range of activities which predate the existence of their group without clear documentation that those projects actually shared their philosophy, and part of that work includes a confusing use of the term "free software" ("the entire history of Unix, Internet free software, and the hacker culture."). It seems hard to maintain both that one "invented" something which has such a long "prehistory". But, more importantly, no matter how far back their philosophical roots go, it's clear that some important work which gets undeservedly little credit was not done under their aegis nor in line with their philosophy—the GNU work Richard Stallman started, for one. It is plainly hypocritical, regardless of what one thinks of Stallman's politics, to give credit where credit is due for, say Torvalds' initial work on the Linux kernel, but not anyone's work on GNU programs.
Your glib rancor hasn't shown how the FSF is improperly using the words "free" and/or "freedom" (as in "software freedom"). It's a shame you don't think they're contributing positively to the world. You try to minimize their effort by arguing the glass is half-empty; we should look at these huge social problems they're not solving. Arguments like that invariably end up backfiring by drawing more attention to how, apparently, you too are not single-handedly solving "poverty and war in the world". Better to recognize that these are enormous problems anyone would be proud to solve if they had something to offer besides what anti-poverty and anti-war activists have been doing since time immemorial.
Digital Citizen
No, the Judo move is going to be about 6 months after the GPLv3 is in force and there has been quite a few project moved over with improvments and all.
I could be wildly off base here, but I think a lot of projects are going to wait a while before moving to GPL 3, if they do at all. The process of getting GPL 3 written was fairly traumatic, and if I had a big project under GPL 2, I wouldn't be anxious to move it to GPL 3 any time soon. Also, I would be surprised if anyone at Microsoft could outsmart Eben Moglen. You're probably right about Stallman not even realizing anything else was going on last Friday. I think I overestimated his abilities as a showman. But Moglen is extremely aware of what's going on around him.
I haven't given GPL 3 a close read yet, but for your sake and mine, I hope your fears don't come true.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ