freebird
Debian Rocks!
The official release of the third version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) is still a couple of months away, yet already, the misunderstandings about it are almost as numerous as those for the second version (GPLv2).
Some of these misunderstandings are due to the lengthy and public revision process for GPLv3, which offers plenty of opportunity for rumors and misreadings. Others may be due to the extensive rewriting of several key sections of GPLv3, notably the language on patents and TiVoization, during the process, so that people are concerned about issues from earlier drafts that the current one corrects or addresses. Still others seem due to willful misunderstandings by opponents of free and open source software. Perhaps, too, the fact that GPLv3 is more obviously a legal document in structure and content than GPLv2 adds to the confusion. But, whatever the origins of the misunderstandings, many have gained currency in both the media and some parts of the free and open source software community.
To separate the confusions and half-truths from the reality, we went to the source: members of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) such as compliance engineer Brett Smith, founder Richard Stallman, and executive director Peter Brown; and the Software Freedom Law Center's Richard Fontana, who is one of the main drafters of the new license. Taken together, their comments help to create a clearer picture of the goals behind GPLv3 and the final form that the license will probably take.
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read full:
*www.itmanagersjournal.com/feature/23144
Some of these misunderstandings are due to the lengthy and public revision process for GPLv3, which offers plenty of opportunity for rumors and misreadings. Others may be due to the extensive rewriting of several key sections of GPLv3, notably the language on patents and TiVoization, during the process, so that people are concerned about issues from earlier drafts that the current one corrects or addresses. Still others seem due to willful misunderstandings by opponents of free and open source software. Perhaps, too, the fact that GPLv3 is more obviously a legal document in structure and content than GPLv2 adds to the confusion. But, whatever the origins of the misunderstandings, many have gained currency in both the media and some parts of the free and open source software community.
To separate the confusions and half-truths from the reality, we went to the source: members of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) such as compliance engineer Brett Smith, founder Richard Stallman, and executive director Peter Brown; and the Software Freedom Law Center's Richard Fontana, who is one of the main drafters of the new license. Taken together, their comments help to create a clearer picture of the goals behind GPLv3 and the final form that the license will probably take.
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read full:
*www.itmanagersjournal.com/feature/23144
