Version 3
In late 2005, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced work on version 3 of the GPL (GPLv3). On 16 January 2006, the first "discussion draft" of GPLv3 was published, and a public consultation began which was to last approximately one year. It actually took a year and a half. The FSF officially released the final version of GPLv3 on 29 June 2007; see [5] for the full text.
GPLv3 was written by Richard Stallman, with legal counsel from Eben Moglen and Software Freedom Law Center.[9]
Stallman's summary of important changes proposed in the first draft included handling software patent issues, free software license compatibility, the definition of "source code", and tivoization.[9] Other notable changes include allowing authors to add certain additional restrictions and requirements to their contributions.
One of those new optional restrictions, sometimes referred to as the Affero clause, is intended to plug a web-publishing loophole; the permitting of this optional restriction is meant to make it permitted to modify GPLv3 to be compatible with the Affero General Public License.
The public consultation process was coordinated by the Free Software Foundation with assistance from Software Freedom Law Center, Free Software Foundation Europe, and other free software groups. Comments were collected from the public via the gplv3.fsf.org web portal. That portal runs purpose-written software called stet. These comments were passed to four committees comprising approximately 130 people, including supporters and detractors of FSF's goals. Those committees researched the comments submitted by the public and passed their summaries to Stallman for a decision on what the license would do.
Unofficial diffs between version 2 and the v3 draft 1 were released by Groklaw.[10].
During the public consultation process, 1,000 comments were submitted for the first draft, and, as of March 2007, 681 comments had been submitted for the second draft.
A third draft was released on 28 March 2007[11]. This draft included language intended to prevent patent cross-licenses like the controversial Microsoft-Novell patent agreement and restricts the anti-tivoization clauses to the legal definition of a "User" or "consumer product." It also explicitly removed the section on "Geographical Limitations" that was planned to be removed in earlier drafts, but was in the drafts nonetheless. An unofficial diff can be found here. Notably, the final discussion draft[12] of the GPLv3, released on 31 May 2007, introduced Apache Software License compatibility, clarified the role of outside contractors, and while grandfathering the Microsoft-Novell agreement, the sixth paragraph of section 11 requires that "You may not convey a covered work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work, and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory patent license [...]", which should make future deals of this form ineffective. The license is also meant to require Microsoft to extend the patent licenses it grants to Novell customers for the use of GPLv3 software to all users of that GPLv3 software; this is possible only if Microsoft is legally a "conveyor" (distributor) of the GPLv3 software.[13][14]
Others, notably some high-profile developers of the Linux kernel, commented to the mass media and made public statements about their objections to parts of discussion drafts 1 and 2.[15]
