A Year of GPLv3

javipas writes "GPLv3 and LGPLv3 were released one year ago, on 29 June 2007. Palamida, who tracks Open Source projects, has made a study of the current situation of these licenses along with AGPLv3, which was released later, in November. The number of projects that have made the transition to these licenses has grown over the last months, and it seems than AGPLv3 has captured a great interest lately. Black Duck Software, a company that tracks Open Source projects too, has made its own study with similar results, and although GPLv3 and its variants have a good adoption rate, the interviews published on the Palamida site (Stallman, Chris Di Bona) show that the acceptance of GPLv3 has still a long way to walk."

Comments

Anyone see much of a difference?

[Kjella]

There's two big news - the anti-tivoization and anti-patent clause. The rest are niceties like better internationalization, compatibility with other licenses etc.

Now, the anti-tivoization clause is rather weak as long as the kernel doesn't go GPLv3. It protects your work from being used in a tivo, but not creating a tivo. If the kernel went GPLv3 on the other hand, you'd have a big problem making any kind of tivo as any code running on top could be modified using a modified kernel. The scares of the "appliance PC-lookalike" seem quite overrated at this point, there's a few special appliance boxes but no big whoop. The anti-patent clause... well, I'm still waiting for anyone with serious patent claims to actually claim them. Didn't Microsoft have 200 or so? Or was that just a bunch of hot air. As long as it's nothing but hot air and FUD, it doesn't seem to change much at all.

Maybe RMS still is a visionary but I think in this case he's seen further ahead in the crystal ball than where we are. I still haven't seen any compelling cases where the GPLv3 is needed.

Re:Anyone see much of a difference?

[McDutchie]

Maybe RMS still is a visionary but I think in this case he's seen further ahead in the crystal ball than where we are.

Uh, yeah. He always does. That's why he's a visionary.

I believe you mean freedom # -1

[FreeUser]

...the tivo makers would switch to using BSD, or something else with a license that doesn't infringe freedom 2 (freedom to redistribute).

The GPL doesn't inhibit freedom 2 at all, unless you wish to use it to remove freedoms 0-n from everyone else.

What you're thinking about is freedom -1: The freedom to take someone else's work for free, modify it, and put onerous restrictions on everyone further along the distribution change. Or more succinctly put: the freedom to fuck your neighbour. Which yes, the GPL v2 tries to prevent, and the GPL v3 prevents more successfully.

Re:I believe you mean freedom # -1

[mrchaotica]

...it prevents you from creating hardware which will only run approved binaries and distributing approved free software binaries for it.

Not quite. You can even do that, if you also give the user the ability to "approve" binaries himself.

Re:I've seen an effect

[Darkness404]

I want to share the code, not enforce political views I disagree with.

No matter how good you think the intentions you have are. If *insert corporation here* wants your code they can take it and use it to create restrictions for the user. The GPLv3 allows the user to take away those and use it on the product. Hardly enforcing political views. Basically, the GPL is to allow the most freedom for end users and make sure that the end users can trust you. If say Linus was hired by MS and decided to close down all of Linux sites, you could still get the kernel. If MS wanted to make a backdoor in the kernel code and sell it as Windows 7, you had the right to take that out despite how much MS wants your computer to be zombified into submission to the *AA.

Political Views

[ClientNine]

I agree. I think the outrage over Tivo is missing the point-- TIVO ISN'T HURTING ANYONE. The availability of the software has enabled the creation of an interesting consumer product, giving all of us the free choice to buy one or not.

If the GPLv3 prevents products like Tivo from appearing, then it's a Bad Thing.

People really need to realize that someone else making money doesn't harm them. This "I want everyone else to suffer" pseudo-socialism is NOT making the world a better place, just a slightly more egalitarian one.

Re:Political Views

[Znork]

giving all of us the free choice to buy one or not.

And when I donate source code I donate it with the intention that any end user be allowed to modify and run it, wherever or on whatever they recieved that code from. If Tivo wants to prevent the end user from doing that they have the free choice to not use my code.

If the GPLv3 prevents products like Tivo from appearing, then it's a Bad Thing.

If Tivo's abuse of the intent of GPL prevents products _better_ than Tivo from appearing, I'd say that's a Bad Thing. And finding examples where customers would have a better product if they could load modified software on their Tivo ain't exactly hard.

People really need to realize that someone else making money doesn't harm them.

Most Free software proponents have no problem with someone else making money. They do, however, have a problem with someone else harming others.

pseudo-socialism is NOT making the world a better place, just a slightly more egalitarian one

Free software is the epitome of free market economics; it's the enforcement of absolute competition.

Considering that proprietary software builds upon state protected monopoly rights and, as is becoming quite obvious, has more in common with former soviet style state factories (you _will_ use Vista and you _will_ like it; no alternate providers here), I'd say comments about socialism are weak.

Re:I've seen an effect

[junglee_iitk]

Good for you. I personally have written a lot of little utilities (web-applications and other bullshit) which I released in public domain.

I never understood the whole point of BSD, ever. If you want to share the code, so much so that whether I am not using it at all or using it to earn millions is something you don't care, then why are you licensing it?

Not trolling... seriously I am asking.

GPLv2 and GPLv3 have the same spirit

[DVega]

If you disagree with GPLv3, you also should disagree with GPLv2. The spirit is the same "dont let anyone take a free-software piece of code, modified it and ban you from modify his modification".

But GPLv2 had a bug. TIVO has found a way to do that. You can modify the code, but the hardware will reject your modification. Your right to "hack" with the source code has been abolished.

I dont see any reason why you should like GPLv2 and not GPLv3.

If you think there is nothing wrong with people taking your code and not letting you play with his code, you should have gone with a BSD-style license. Otherwise GPLv3 is an improvement of GPLv2.

I know that some people think that GPLv3 is bad (most notably Linux Torvalds) but after reading their objections I really dont understand their logic. It seems to me more of an ego fight against RMS than sensible disagreement.

Re:Stallman hasn't gone to hell yet?

[Per Wigren]

How about "free as in free to use something else that has another license, reimplement the functionality yourself or pay someone to reimplement it"? It's not like you are forced to use GPLed software. If you want to just benefit from free code without giving anything back to the community then you are a leech and get treated as such.