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GPL v3 Coming Out in 2007?

Posted by timothy on Wed Aug 10, 2005 06:39 PM
from the could-be-could-be dept.
GNU is Not Unix Software Linux
gentoo1337 writes "Eben Moglen of the FSF speaks out in this ZDNet article, noting that GPL v3 may be publicly drafted in early 2006, and in force one year later. The process is very sensitive (noting concerns of forking in the Linux world), but Eben Moglen is optimistic: 'When it's all over, people are going to say, "All that talking for just that much change?" [...] We will do no harm. If we think (some change) may have any unintended consequences, we will not recommend making it.' Controversies aside, there is some good news -- Richard Stallman aims to 'lower barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.' The earlier Slashdot discussion contains complementary info about the intentions of FSF."
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  • Analysis Paralysis? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bc90021 (43730) * <bc90021@bc900[ ]net ['21.' in gap]> on Wednesday August 10 2005, @06:43PM (#13290476) Homepage
    Am I the only one who thinks it's going to take longer? Given the number of parties/factions involved (FSF, EFF, RedHat, Linus, ESR, etc.), I think it may take longer. I know that not all those people have to have the new GPL "cleared" with them, but I'm sure they'll all want to weigh in on the process, which will likely lengthen it.

    • ESR? Heh. (Score:3, Funny)

      by QuantumG (50515)
      sellout poser [geekz.co.uk].

    • I'm waiting for GPL Episode IV: A Gnu Hope. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The subject says it all.

      • Re:Analysis Paralysis? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Wesley Felter (138342) <wesley@felter.org> on Wednesday August 10 2005, @07:02PM (#13290602) Homepage
        Yeah, heaven forbid that the users of the GPL would have any say in how it works.

            • Re:Analysis Paralysis? (Score:3, Insightful)

              by znu (31198)
              This is such total nonsense. The BSD operating systems get plenty of community contributions. In some cases, BSD-licensed code is more likely to to spur contributions, because it can be used in more scenarios -- companies can use it with no worries about code contamination, for instance, and while they don't have to contribute back to the community, in many cases they will, because it's still in their own best interests.

              If they contribute their changes back to the main trunk, they'll (probably) be able bene

      • licence free software (Score:2, Interesting)

        by ZhuLien (150593)
        I actually agree with a fair amount of this regarding licence-free software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License-free_software [wikipedia.org]

      • Re:Analysis Paralysis? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Waffle Iron (339739) on Wednesday August 10 2005, @07:47PM (#13290847)
        I don't need a licence to use a knife and fork, why a computer program?

        You don't need any license to use a GPL'd program. You only need a license if you want to redistribute it.

        The reason you need the license to redistribute the computer program is because copyright law says you have no right to do so otherwise.

          • The GPL does not contain any restriction that keeps you from selling a piece of software for a huge profit. It merely makes you give source code access to those who you sell it to.
      • The reason is that you can't make a copy of that knife and fork and distribute it to others nearly as easily as you can software. The GPL is there to protect the writers from abuse while at the same time encouraging an open community to form around it... If your project is just for fun, and you dont' want any help working on it, go ahead and release it like that... just don't expect anyone to contribute back.

  • Version conflicts? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ossifer (703813) on Wednesday August 10 2005, @06:46PM (#13290492)
    Being that 99 44/100% of all GPL'd software originally came out under the current GPL, will there be any version conflicts with currently licensed software? I.e. if the newer license is *less* restrictive on some point, can existing software licensing be "upgraded" to the new license without have to obtain the acceptance of every single contributor?

    P.S. This is a real question, not a flamebait or troll...

    • Re:Version conflicts? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sconeu (64226)
      Generally, if you look at license files, they say V2 of GPL *or later*.

      The Linux kernel is a notable exception to this.
      • So they have an implicit acceptance of whatever might go into to version n years from now?

        Like "permission to use the author's power tools on odd weekends"? ;-)
        • So they have an implicit acceptance of whatever might go into to version n years from now? Like "permission to use the author's power tools on odd weekends"? ;-)

          This is why I don't quite get the "or later" clause. Sure it adds flexibility, but it basically trusts that the FSF won't do anything you're significantly unhappy with in future versions of the license.

          Tying it down to one version, and saying that a later version of the GPL can be applied *provided the original author agrees* might work, but
          • People should start putting time-limits in their code.. like, this code becomes public domain on such-and-such a date or in addition to the rights granted by the GPL, on {date} the rights of {other less restrictive license} are also granted.

            This is necessary because the period of copyright keeps increasing and more than 90 years is far too long to wait to change a license in the world of software.
      • "v2 or later" is *NOT* trivially convertable to "v3 or later." You either need all authors to agree to it, or you need to fork off the project and then convince all authors to work on the new fork.

        The only practical benefit the clause provides is that a future v3 developer can incorporate v2 (but not v1) code. It's so that future versions can be backward compatiblity, not that past versions can be forward compatible.
        • You either need all authors to agree to it, or you need to fork off the project and then convince all authors to work on the new fork.
          These two statements are identical.
        • The two statements conflict:

          You either need all authors to agree to it...

          a future v3 developer can incorporate v2 (but not v1) code

          Either the 'or later' clause allows code to be 'promoted' to v3, or it doesn't. If it doesn't then a v3 author cannot include v2 code without the permission of the original author.
      • ...as is anyone who's got any sense. Until I've seen the v3 GPL I will *not* agree to any of my code being licensed to it.

        Too many stories of the FSF taking license fees, etc.. they may not come to pass but there's no damned way I'm agreeing to it blind.
      • Linux version 2.2, at least, didn't specify the GPL version, so that you can use any (including GPL v1). This presumably carries through; it's only 2.4-and-later additions that are difficult. Of course, 2.4-and-later additions are incredibly important to desktop users, so...

  • This is old news (Score:4, Interesting)

    by darthgnu (866920) on Wednesday August 10 2005, @06:48PM (#13290505) Homepage Journal
    Sorry for sounding pedantic, but he announced this at the FSF associate members meeting March 26th. I'm surprised nobody came out with this info earlier.

  • Clarification (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2005, @06:50PM (#13290519)
    I was in Eben's talk. The following sentence from the summary is a but unclear:

    lower barriers that today prevent the mixing of software covered by the GPL and other licenses.

    What RMS means by this is compatibility with other Free software licenses (such as hopefully the Apache license), rather than compromise with proprietary software.
  • Isn't most of the Linux kernel licensed under GPL 2 only? Doesn't that mean that, no, it can't fork, new license or not?

    I mean, to fork it (to use GPL 3), you'd have to (for each file) find everybody who has ever made changes to that file (unless the changes have since been replaced) and get their permission to license that under GPL 3. If they refuse, you have to re-write the section that their changes are in (or the whole file). This doesn't seem realistic...
    • Does the Kernel require copyright assignments like GCC? I'd think this could allow the assignee to change the license etc. Not sure this is the case though: GCC development appears (IMHO) to be much more structured than the Kernel -- for better or worse.
      • ...which has no bearing on the grandparent's post, which is about the Linux kernel.

        The Linux kernel only makes most of itit available under v2 of the license:
        Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.


        COPYING from linux-2-6-12-13.tar
  • If the code is open, many people will use it as they feel fit.

    Sure, there will be suits and accusations, but business will continue as usual.. I really dont see some 'magical version 3' changing anything around here.

    And no, its not a troll to start a arguement on the validity of GPL/BSD/ETC, ( which i wont particpate in any longer anyway ) just a statement about the current state of 'code reuse' in the world.

  • Show me the code (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wesley Felter (138342) <wesley@felter.org> on Wednesday August 10 2005, @06:58PM (#13290579) Homepage
    Am I the only one who's tired of hearing that GPL v3 is coming real soon now? What's the use in talking about it if there are no drafts to discuss?

    (Obligatory: I wonder if Duke Nukem Forever for the Phantom console will be licensed under GPL v3...)

  • Reasonable people... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sploxx (622853) on Wednesday August 10 2005, @07:04PM (#13290617)
    This all sounds very reasonable and careful. Why are the FSF people -esp. RMS- portrayed as being zealots here on /.?
    Of course they have an agenda. They may be (described as) somewhat fundamentalistic. But it seems that they are still arguing in very reasonable ways.

  • I've said it before... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nuclear Elephant (700938) on Wednesday August 10 2005, @07:06PM (#13290624) Homepage
    All I want is the ability to declare public and private interfaces for GPL products, where public interfaces can be used with any type of license and private interfaces are off-limits unless you're a GPL project.

    • Uh, why can't you have that now? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mcc (14761) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Wednesday August 10 2005, @07:24PM (#13290724) Homepage
      All you have to do is distribute your program under the GPL, and provide a file saying "you are granted the rights to redistribute under the GPL, however you also are granted the right to link against this program and redistribute freely so long as you do so only via the interfaces declared in public_interface.h."

      It is as simple as that. The Linux Kernel, as it happens, does almost exactly this.

      Another option is that you could put some parts of your program (the "private" parts) under the GPL and other parts (the "public" parts) under the LGPL. I have seen programs that did exactly this.

      The GPL does not restrict rights. It only grants them. As the copyright holder, you are of course free to grant as many other rights as you want in addition to the GPL rights. Of course, you can't speak for any other copyright holders that may have provided material in the program...
      • You can't put some of a program under GPL and some under LGPL. GPL trumps LGPL, making the LGPL parts irrelevant.

        • Re:Uh, why can't you have that now? (Score:5, Informative)

          by mcc (14761) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Wednesday August 10 2005, @08:47PM (#13291131) Homepage
          Sure you can.

          If there's GPL and LGPL code mixed in a program, then the program as a whole is licensed under the GPL.

          However, the LGPLed parts are still just as LGPLed as they were before. The LGPL parts may then be detached and used in anything else you like. An example of this in action would be the KDE web browser Konqueror. Konqueror is under the GPL. However, portions of it (specifically the KHTML web rendering component) are licensed under the LGPL. You can't take Konqueror (or anything built using any of the GPL-licensed files in Konqueror) and distribute it without obeying the GPL. However, you can take KHTML-- which is an extremely useful piece of software-- build a new web browser around it, and resell it completely free of GPL obligations. Several commercial groups, such as Apple Computer, have done exactly this.

          This obviously only works under some circumstances (for example, when the LGPLed component is something which can be detached and still be useful), but under some circumstances this is exactly what you want. I considered it worthy of mention because the toplevel post seemed to me to be very vague about exactly what it was he wanted.
        • You can if you own the copyright to the part you want to put under LGPL.

          Look at it like this. We'll used the BSD license because the differences are more drastic.

          I can release my program under the GPL license or the BSD license. I can also put links to two different downloads of the same code, one of which has a COPYING that's the GPL and one that's BSD. Do you agree so far?

          I can also distribute just the GPL version, and say "this is dual licensed under the GPL and BSD."

          This is how there's BSD code in the L
    • Yeah, but have you said it before to the people writing the new version? I think you should, since it strikes me as a good idea.

      Also, you know you can write such a clause into your own projects (i.e. ones you own the copyright of), right? You may not want to because then it'll be "almost GPL" instead of GPL, but the option is there.

  • Fonts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by proxima (165692) on Wednesday August 10 2005, @08:00PM (#13290916)
    With luck, the GPL v3 will clear up the issue of fonts [fsf.org]. The issue has been discussed on Slashdot before [slashdot.org].Namely, that if I use a GPL font in a document, and subsequently embed that font through a document format (OO's sxw or OpenDocument, pdf, ps, etc), it's unclear as to whether I have the legal ability to do so without declaring the document itself GPL (which isn't really a document license). People sometimes (apparently mistakenly, but IANAL) say that it would force your document to be GPLed, but that's really not the case. You can't be automatically forced to license your work as anything, but you can be guilty of copyright infringement. The issue does also apparently not extend to printed documents and such, since the font itself cannot be copyrighted, only the code (postscript, etc) that generates the font can be.

    It's unfortunate that such vagueness persists with the GPL, but it seems to be a trend with copyright issues in general (fair use being the most visible).

    • Re:Fonts (Score:3, Insightful)

      by multipart/mixed (163409)
      That font argument is entertaining.

      What I use GNU bc to calculate some numbers, which I then embed in a proprietary application.

      Is my application now "tainted"?

    • Re:What's missing from GPL2? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Baricom (763970) on Wednesday August 10 2005, @06:47PM (#13290498)
      Some people have expressed concern that organizations can take GPL'd code, modify it, and then run a web site with it. The act of running a web site using GPL code isn't considered distribution by the FSF, and the source code modifications therefore can be kept to themselves.

      That's the argument. Personally, I don't know how I feel about it one way or the other.

      • Re:What's missing from GPL2? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by natrius (642724) <niran.niran@org> on Wednesday August 10 2005, @07:12PM (#13290666) Homepage
        Some people have expressed concern that organizations can take GPL'd code, modify it, and then run a web site with it. The act of running a web site using GPL code isn't considered distribution by the FSF, and the source code modifications therefore can be kept to themselves.

        Running a web site isn't considered distribution by copyright either, and that's what really matters here. The GPL doesn't go into effect until you try to make a copy of the software, and even when it's in effect, you only have to distribute the source code to the people you distribute binaries to. If you only distribute it internally, then it really doesn't make a difference. Technically, a new version of the GPL could say that you have to give a copy of the code to the FSF if you want to distribute binaries at all, even within your own organization, but I don't think many people would actually want to use that license.

        Personally, I think that making internal changes and not sharing them with the world is against the spirit of the GPL. People gave their work to you for free, and you don't want to give your changes back as payback? That's pretty lame. However, I don't think there's any practical way for a new version of the GPL to prevent it. Smart people try to get their changes accepted upsteam anyway so they don't have to maintain patches and make sure they apply and don't introduce new bugs. It's just less work.

        • Re:What's missing from GPL2? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Brandybuck (704397) on Wednesday August 10 2005, @07:22PM (#13290714) Homepage Journal
          Personally, I think that making internal changes and not sharing them with the world is against the spirit of the GPL.

          Why do you think that? Do you think the same of companies that use GPL software *internally*? You've said yourself that this is okay, and in addition, RMS has gone out of his way to reject licenses that demand this. But what's the difference?

          Applying the restrictions only within the legal domain of copyright **IS** the spirit of the GPL! To subsequently extend it beyond the domain of copyright to encompass the execution of software on servers is what is against the spirit of the GPL.
          • I'm sleepy. I think I made a mistake in my original post. To make a derivative work, you need permission from the author, usually in the form of a blanket license like the GPL. Theoretically, someone could come up with a license that says you must make public any derivative work you create. If this were the case with the GPL, then people running modified versions of GPL'd software on their servers would have to share their changes. It'd be hard to prove, but it could still be "required."

            Now on to your que
      • Thank god Apache isn't GPL then.

        WTF is wrong with using software that's distributed freely, spending your own time updating, then using it without redistributing it? If GPLv3 forbids that then it'll be going *way* beyond copyright law and even proprietary licenses.

      • Some people have expressed concern that organizations can take GPL'd code, modify it, and then run a web site with it. The act of running a web site using GPL code isn't considered distribution by the FSF, and the source code modifications therefore can be kept to themselves.
        To state the concern more clearly say EvilCompany takes gcc, does some crazy optimizations, and starts running it on their server never releasing the code, call it pgcc (propietary gcc). Then they sell a small app ttpgcc (talking to pro
        • I'd sure love to hear ESR's input as to what goes into GPL3

          "By redistributing this software, you accept that any violation of the terms of this license may result in you being pursued and shot by a rabid gun fiend with large number of firearms."
        • I sure as hell wouldn't. The man doesn't live in the real world if he thinks open source will continue to thrive without GPL type licensing... just look at how booming the BSD community is compared to the Linux one...there's a reason for that.

          I've got a longer version of my argument here [blogspot.com] if anyone cares to read it.

    • Re:What's missing from GPL2? (Score:5, Informative)

      by squiggleslash (241428) on Wednesday August 10 2005, @06:58PM (#13290575) Homepage Journal
      Patents.

      Right now GPLv2 pays lipservice to patents but doesn't really have strong sanctions against companies who use them to quash free software. The provisions it has are weak and arguably unenforceable if the company distributing GPL'd software suddenly decides to cease.

      Nokia, for example, may be able to get away with deciding to end its distribution of GNU/Linux, then suing anyone who's made a derivative version that violates a patent of their's in a way that versions they shipped didn't. Indeed, it's quite possible that a third party entering new code that infringes upon a Nokia patent, even today, could be stopped by Nokia.

      (If anyone thinks I'm being unfair to Nokia, yes, unless they actually do this, then I am being, but at the same time they put out a very, very, guarded comment a few months ago that quite obviously left these scenarios open.)

      What many people want to see is companies that use patents against free software unable to use a large body of free software from there on. That means a solution to the above issue, but also to, say, discourage suing in general by ensuring that if a company chooses to deny the use of a patented technology to one free software project, it chooses to deny itself the use of any. So if IBM sues to get a technology out of, let's say, Apache, it can't turn around and continue to distribute a (theoretically GPLv3'd) Linux kernel.

      Software patents were not a serious problem when the first two GPLs were drafted, though I believe they existed by the time the second version was created. They are now, and they pose a serious threat to free software.

      • RMS doesn't want to forbid the distrobution of GPLed software for money. In fact, he's even said that it's okay to distribute for profit.

        He just said that you need to include the source when you ship the binary copy. If he'd wanted everything to be free as in beer as well as free as in freedom, he would have written that into the license.

        • I was (half-)joking with my original post, however:

          RMS doesn't want to forbid the distrobution of GPLed software for money. In fact, he's even said that it's okay to distribute for profit.

          OTOH, the GPL is designed in such a way as to make distributing (GPLed) software for profit practically impossible (without it being legally tied to/bundled with some other product or service).

          He just said that you need to include the source when you ship the binary copy.

          *AND* that anyone you distribute it to must al

              • Free software [development] does not appear to have any viable method of recouping development costs (particularly initial development costs).

                Sure it does: if you want a particular feature developed, hire some programmers to write the necessary code. You just have to realize programmers are providing a service, rather than manufacturing a good.
          • I dunno.. Redhat seem to have no problems with this.

            In the real world most end users don't give a crap if the source is available.. they're not programmers. They want support (which the likes of IBM/Redhat give them) and they're prepared to pay to get it.
        • You're right that the GPL isn't entirely "free" in the "can do what the heck you want with it" sense. That would be more like the BSD license; or taken to its logical conclusion, releasing your software as "public domain".

          Personally, I think that if people want to release their work under a BSD (or weaker) license, that's their choice. I just don't want to hear anyone bitch about it when such freely-available software gets incorporated into a proprietary product, and the company gives nothing back.

          It de
    • Ever hear of "the law of unintended consequences"?

      They're trying to not mess up all the ways that GPLed code is used. That's not easy, because it's used a lot of different ways. And, they are trying to build a license that will not fail when subjected to the next ten years' worth of (currently) unknown attacks. (Look at how GPL 2 stood up under SCO's attack, and you'll see what I mean.)

      This isn't just "slap together a license, and we'll fix it next week if we don't get it right the first time". Sinc

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