naveenchandran
In the zone
Welcome to GPLv3
We are here to revise and update the GNU General Public License, from version 2 to version 3.
In fifteen years of use, version 2 of the GNU General Public License has succeeded beyond our expectations. It has nurtured a spirit of cooperation and trust that has enabled a worldwide community of user/developers to release an extraordinary range of free software. The underlying principle of respect for users' right to cooperate has spread beyond the field of software, to inspire many other creative and scientific endeavors.
The success of the GPL is due to its fundamental design principle: the protection of users' freedom to work individually or together to make software do what they wish. To carry the GPL into the future, we have undertaken to adapt the license to uphold this principle through the opportunities and menaces of today's technological and legal environment.
The core legal mechanism of the GNU GPL is that of copyleft, which requires modified versions of GPL'd software to be GPL'd themselves. Copyleft is essential for preventing the enclosure of the free software commons, today as it was in 1991. But today's environment is more complex and diverse; thus, a fully effective copyleft calls for additional legal measures. Devising these measures is complicated by another aspect of our success: the worldwide adoption of free software principles. We hope and expect that contributors to GPLv3 will come from all over the globe, and from every developer, distributor, and user constituency.
Source: *gplv3.fsf.org
We are here to revise and update the GNU General Public License, from version 2 to version 3.
In fifteen years of use, version 2 of the GNU General Public License has succeeded beyond our expectations. It has nurtured a spirit of cooperation and trust that has enabled a worldwide community of user/developers to release an extraordinary range of free software. The underlying principle of respect for users' right to cooperate has spread beyond the field of software, to inspire many other creative and scientific endeavors.
The success of the GPL is due to its fundamental design principle: the protection of users' freedom to work individually or together to make software do what they wish. To carry the GPL into the future, we have undertaken to adapt the license to uphold this principle through the opportunities and menaces of today's technological and legal environment.
The core legal mechanism of the GNU GPL is that of copyleft, which requires modified versions of GPL'd software to be GPL'd themselves. Copyleft is essential for preventing the enclosure of the free software commons, today as it was in 1991. But today's environment is more complex and diverse; thus, a fully effective copyleft calls for additional legal measures. Devising these measures is complicated by another aspect of our success: the worldwide adoption of free software principles. We hope and expect that contributors to GPLv3 will come from all over the globe, and from every developer, distributor, and user constituency.
Source: *gplv3.fsf.org
