FSF Compliance Lab Addresses GPLv3 Questions

GeekyBodhi writes "Brett Smith, the licensing compliance engineer at FSF's Free Software Licensing and Compliance Lab held a public question and answer session in an IRC meeting last night. At the meeting Smith addressed questions regarding various sections of GPLv3 (Linux.com shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) including Section 7 (additional rights), and Section 11 (patents and patent protection), and explained how the incompatibility between GPLv2 and GPLv3 doesn't rule out any interaction between differently licensed programs."

Comments

Re:Like Vista

[raitchison]

Not quite in either case, though it's fair to say that neither have seen the adoption rates that their respective creators expected or wanted. Furthermore a lack of adoption presents a real (though relatively small) threat to each's (is each's a word?) near-monopoly/de-facto standard (Windows in Desktop Operating Systems and GPL in Open Source Licenses)

In the end when the smoke clears I think that both will ultimately succeed (for better or for worse) but you will end up with a slightly larger percentage of Desktops running non-Microsoft operating systems and a slightly larger percentage of open source projects released under a non GPL license.

Is the complexity worth it?

[Dlugar]

Unfortunately they didn't answer the big question I have:

Why do they think all the additional complexity of the GPLv3 is needed? After all, wasn't that one of the biggest complaints about the GPLv2, that it was too complex to understand? And now you have all this extra language and extra penalties and extra permissions that, in my estimation, don't give you a better license. It doesn't prevent Tivo-ization (and I don't think you really can without even worse side effects), it doesn't prevent Microsoft/Novell-type deals, it doesn't prevent software patent FUD against Free Software ... what really do third-party developers gain from licensing their software GPLv3 over v2? Nothing but a bunch of headache, in my opinion.

Dlugar

Re:Is the complexity worth it?

[webmaster404]

Exactly, it seems like the GPLV3 was made in effort to stop Tivo and MS and Novell. That is it, add in a few things about patents and that is the GPLV3, it seems to be a "temporary" licence, one that only is any good in 2007-2008 when it will need rewritten again. While the GPL2 was a solid licence meant to defend code freedom rather then stop a few companies from exploiting flaws in the previous GPL.

Re:Is the complexity worth it?

[Ed Avis]

As new threats to freedom are identified, we should try to defend against them. Switching to a new licence is a hassle, but would you rather ignore the problem?

The GPL's goal is to make sure the software is free for all its users (not just free for some of them depending on whether the vendor deigned to give them the needed hardware keys or patent licences). That simple goal has not changed. If the licence text has become more complex, that is because the threats it needs to overcome have become more complex.

As long as you licence your code under 'GPLv3 or later', there won't be a big problem when the next attack on freedom comes and GPLv4 becomes necessary.

Re:Is the complexity worth it?

[gbutler69]

Much (maybe most) of the additional complexity is required for the GPL to be more legally sound in a world-wide market as opposed to just the U.S. Much of the GPLv2 language was legally sound for the U.S., but, somewhat less legally sound in other legal jurisdictions. The GPLv3 attempts to address this by using language that is recognized throughout the world to have very specific legal meanings.

Re:Is the complexity worth it? - Agreed

[augustz]

Yep.

One of the things that really made GPLv2 approachable was it's directness and simplicity. I think it also gave it it's strength.

GPLv3 is one of those lawyer sounding licenses. They try to specify everything (ie, instead of saying all colors, they'll write all colors including red, orange, green, blue and any other generally considered colors not named).

But reading it over, I'm not sure it buys much, and it certainly makes it much harder to understand. And that's a real shame.

And the Tivoization issue is a bit of a red herring I think. Tivo should be required to distribute the software, so others could create a Tivo device themselves. I'm not sure it fits the original principals to force tivo to open their hardware box. It's interesting, by trying to restrict it you get all sorts of ugly side effects.

I'm looking forward to a simple 2-3 page license again in the future.

Howso?

[einhverfr]

If you distribute GPL v2 software and then sue for patent infrignement while you still are distributing the software, you are violating the authors' copyrights.

Furthermore, under the GPL v3 I can do a lot of things I couldn't under the GPL v2:
1) Release beta versions of software under NDA's provided that the contract also stipulates that they are receiving the software solely for the purpose of providing QA services for me by testing their own software against mine.

2) Use hypervisors and aggregated updates (for components in other VM's) to prevent updated software from doing anything (the software isn't interfered with in any way, but everything that it needs to talk to is missing if you provide your own update!)

3) Use hypervisors and other VMs to create DRM which can't be circumvented by accessing the source code of the kernel (because the decryption/hardware interfaces occur in another VM).

Seems like a lot of work to go to for not a lot more freedom of the end user.....

Re:Is the complexity worth it? - Agreed

[Xtifr]

One of the things that really made GPLv2 approachable was it's directness and simplicity. Wow, you've got a funny notion of "directness and simplicity".

~ $ wc /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD
  26 225 1499 /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD
~ $ wc /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL
  339 2968 17987 /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2

I've been listening to people complain about the length and complexity of the GPL for years! Frankly, I think once you've gone beyond the point where the average person can easily grasp it (which the GPLv2 was clearly beyond, IMO), there's little point in not going the rest of the way to do things right (which the GPLv3 mostly does, IMO). I particularly like the increased compatibility with other licenses. V3 may be longer, but it still seems pretty straightforward to me.

Bottom line: so many people misunderstand or misinterpret v2 on a regular basis that it's really hard for me to believe that v3 is going to make things noticeably worse. People are still going to be posting about how the GPL means you can't charge money and you're going to be forced to release all of your company's code. Dummies will remain dummies. And I think I grok both versions pretty well, so I really don't see a problem.

Of course, it may just be that I'm old enough to remember the huge controversies and flamewars about v2 when that was new. Kids today seem to accept it as standard and noncontroversial, but it was as despised and reviled in its day as v3 is now.

Re:One thing, at least, is simple

[einhverfr]

Cetainly St iGNUcious himself is all about faith and does not seem to care about logic or facts. The FSF is not just limited to such people however. I know a number of people who do advocate the GPL for reasons which are sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

My own opinion is that RMS has. like President Bush, come to see the world in terms of universal conflict where Freedom must be sacrificed in order to be preserved. Hence the GFDL has clauses which are designed to allow the FSF and others to *force* that certain advoacy documents are included with technical documentation (forced advocacy is fundamentally at odds with freedom of speech), and asked the chief architect of GNU (Thomas Bushnell) to resign for publically stating a similar opinion.

Re:Is the complexity worth it? - Agreed

[larry bagina]

rm won't let me delete files that belong to someone else! That's a GPL v3 violation!!!!!!