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GNU is Not Unix Software Apache

FSF Releases Fourth and Final Draft of GPLv3 237

An anonymous reader writes "The most notable changes found in this latest draft include making GPLv3 compatible with version 2.0 of the Apache license, ensuring that distributors who make discriminatory patent deals after March 28 may not convey software under GPLv3, adding terms to clarify how users can contract for private modification of free software or for a data center to run it for them, and replacing the previous reference to a U.S. consumer protection statute with explicit criteria for greater clarity outside the United States. The draft also does not prohibit Novell from distributing software under GPLv3 'because the patent protection they arranged with Microsoft last November can be turned against Microsoft to the community's benefit,' FSF executive director Peter Brown said."
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FSF Releases Fourth and Final Draft of GPLv3

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  • by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @06:25AM (#19349745) Homepage
    GPLv3 is a key event in Microsoft's war to divide and conquer the Free Software / Open Source community [digitalmajority.org]. Most of the Linux industry seems to be betting on GPLv3 to put an end to Microsoft's patent claims. My question is simply: is Microsoft sitting around scratching its head, or has it already started on the next level of play...? Are we going to see those 235 patents handed over to the community, or are we instead going to see "IP Bridges" as the next great Product to come out of Redmond?
    • I don't think the "IP Bridges" is plausible. As most have said, if Microsoft were to validly claim IP infringement, most if not all projects would revamp and/or code around the infringement.
      • by H4x0r Jim Duggan ( 757476 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @08:09AM (#19350465) Homepage Journal

        That can work sometimes, but not always.

        If we have an application with round buttons and they turn out to be patented, we just make ours square. That's ok because having round buttons is not the purpose of the application. But if we have an application whose purpose is to read and edit MS Word documents, and a patent says we are not allowed to do that, then that application is kaput.

        Here are some good explanations of how the patent problem plays out and what we can and can't do about it: http://fsfe.org/transcripts#patents [fsfe.org].

      • by sumdumass ( 711423 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @11:37AM (#19353341) Journal
        I don't think microsoft has to go that far and can still seriously harm opensource.

        I have been talking about this in several areas plus I have notified the FSF itself of the potential. They acknowledged it but didn't seem to care enough to make a change on the portion of the GPL that would allow it. And seeing how this is the final draft, it doesn't appear as if anything will ever be addressed.

        My problem revolves around this section of the draft.

        A patent license is "discriminatory" if it does not include within the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are specifically granted under this License. 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 (a) in connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you (or copies made from those copies), or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific products or compilations that contain the covered work, unless you entered into that arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28 March 2007.

        It seems that the FSF is so mad at Novell for making a deal with microsft they are willing to set up microsoft's final plan for free opensource using the gpl. Now forget all the FUD that can be said about how viral the GPL is, forget that they are going to hold up Novell's treatment as the new boogeyman's stick to scare people and companies away from opensource. forget all that for now, because now they have the ability to let the GPL stop people from distributing it.

        Now, lets examine this a little closer, it says, 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

        Microsoft can include an arrangement on this into every single windows license. They can also lay claim to everything you use as falling under this protection. Basically, all they have to do is add or fix a clause into the license for ever windows product you buy that says, "microsoft promises not to sue for the use of pattent or IP related issues in connection with your use of third party software including opensource software covered by the GPL. This activity covers your acts of distributing the said software and extends only to direct to anyone you distribute to but not any further then that. This offer is only valid if you have a valid right to this license agreement and you are not the responsible party placing the disputed IP in the software in question"

        Now, anyone who buys microsoft software and clicks the I accept button to install it has basically purposely placed themselves into a position directly spelled out in the GPL and directly effecting your ability to distribute GPLv3 work after this. So lets see who buys Microsoft products, HMMM, almost everyone, Even GPL developers. And more interesting, now these programs that are GPLed and run both in linux and windows, are going to have to quite using the GPLv3 or find another license. Of course there is the option to quit developing for windows. This biggest problem might be all the companies who use microsoft products. The entire participate and all stuff just left the window if they use windows. And microsoft could offer indemnification separately for companies who are fearing lawsuits. It could become an option for an extra $20 on the support contracts they have.

        Something even more surprising would be that Dell

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Petrushka ( 815171 )

          I may be slow, but I don't get your first point. How does my clicking "I agree" to a Windows EULA equate to my becoming "a party to an arrangement with a third party ... under which [I] make payment ... based on the extent of [my] activity of conveying [a GPL-covered] work"? In other words, while the Microsoft EULA is certainly discriminatory for distribution of the Microsoft software, it has nothing to do with distribution of GPL-ed software, so I don't see why it could or should have any impact on distrib

    • Which, like that of Stevens, cost a lot without exactly going anywhere useful, no doubt.
    • by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) * on Friday June 01, 2007 @07:24AM (#19350101) Homepage Journal

      My question is simply: is Microsoft sitting around scratching its head, or has it already started on the next level of play...?


      Yes. Microsoft has developed a culture that almost exactly matches that of one of its principle founders, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Bill Gates. As Gates did while playing poker in college, Microsoft always has more than one strategy that it's pursuing. There's almost certainly plan B, and its not going to be pretty.

      Are we going to see those 235 patents handed over to the community


      No. The '235 patents' are far more valuable if they aren't revealed than if they are. Microsoft knows that if these patents were listed, then various groups including the FSF, EFF, PubPat and others will be challenging the validity of those patents in court. The FAT patent is just the start...

      or are we instead going to see "IP Bridges" as the next great Product to come out of Redmond?


      The 'next great product' to come out of Redmond will almost certainly be something to either further discredit Free Software / Open Source / Linux. Anything to drive people to Windows and away from Linux and GPL software in particular.

      • "As Gates did while playing poker in college, Microsoft always has more than one strategy that it's pursuing. There's almost certainly plan B, and its not going to be pretty."

        Microsoft is playing that "You break our patents" game for a lot of time, with less than ideal results... That lets me wondering if there really is a plan B. Maybe there is no other possible plan for choosing now, since if there was one, we could trust Microsoft to find it.

        When you try to win against a huge and very adaptative comp

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by sumdumass ( 711423 )
          Microsoft's plan B, or maybe it is C, D, E, or F, is to wait for the GPLv3 to become fixated and then change their license or support contracts to include indemnification of some sorts and thereby triggering the anti Novell parts in the GPLV3. You probably won't see it right at first. They will one day come out and announce they are working so hard to get along with opensource that they are going to indemnify a user of microsoft products who uses any non-microsoft product that might violate any of their IP
      • The 'next great product' to come out of Redmond will almost certainly be something to either further discredit Free Software / Open Source / Linux. Anything to drive people to Windows and away from Linux and GPL software in particular.

        I disagree. I think their current strategy on this is going to be denying the existence of Free Software and keeping the media as quiet as possible about it. Every time Microsoft attacks Free Software (usually "Linux") there ends up being lots of news stories about it, as ther
    • If I recall correctly those 235 patents do not all belong to MS. They just like to throw that number around because it sounds scary to people who have to worry about their company getting sued. My understanding is that a lot of the patents in the 235 are owned by FLOSS friendly companies like IBM.

      But, call me cynical, I can't see MS at any point giving up the one's they do have. As other posters have mentioned they are more valuable as FUD material then anything else.
  • Bleh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by El Lobo ( 994537 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @06:31AM (#19349769)
    More politics.. Who really need it? Really don't people have anything better to to? Like, ACTUALLY writtig software?
    • Re:Bleh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @06:52AM (#19349895)
      Programmers hate politics like this. The recent emphasis on it is simply an attempt to make it go away. Sadly, that never works and instead only gets the participants mired in politics for the rest of their lives.

      I used to be extremely anti-GPL. Now I'm just slightly anti-GPL, and actually like the LGPL. In a politics-free world, BSD is pretty much the 'obvious' license for a FOSS project. It's just too bad that that'll never be the way the world works.

      RMS is far from being my hero, but his tactics and efforts are necessary to balance out a world that has been overrun with greed. There's no other way to explain taking someone else's work and using it for your own ends without even giving credit. (Greed isn't just about money, it's about having things, including fame.)

      And because I can't resist, I've reworded your post:

      More whinging.. Who really need it? Really don't people have anything better to to? Like, ACTUALLY doing something?
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bentcd ( 690786 )
        In a politics-free world, BSD is pretty much the 'obvious' license for a FOSS project.

        In a politics-free world, there wouldn't be any licenses because there would be no copyright law to make them enforcable.

        Which, of course, boils down to a BSD-like situation except it's unclear how much more secrecy this would lead to. I'm guessing not much.
        • It boils down to all software being BSD-like in its distribution restrictions (i.e: No restrictions). However the situation will be much closer to a GPL world one, because the incentive to create closed software that you cannot sell will approximate nil. Closed-source's single advantage over opensource - its ability to raise disproportionate funds for its development will disappear and opensource software will simply outachieve it.
          • by bentcd ( 690786 )
            It boils down to all software being BSD-like in its distribution restrictions (i.e: No restrictions). However the situation will be much closer to a GPL world one, because the incentive to create closed software that you cannot sell will approximate nil.

            The single most interesting distinction between GPL and BSD (imo) is that with GPL you cannot distribute a modified binary without also offering your modified source. With this in mind, a copyright-free world would be BSD-like in that someone could withhold
            • With this in mind, a copyright-free world would be BSD-like in that someone could withhold their source.

              They could, but what good would it do them when they can't sell the software?

              This would probably see some (possibly niche) use in people adding useful-but-not-obvious algorithms to common software and then milking these proprietary additions for the weeks, months or years it would take open source to catch up.

              "Milk it" how? Without copyright, they'll only be able to sell the software exactly once. In t

      • I agree with you. I am a BSD-supporter and used to be anti-GPL since thought it was motivated by paranoi. But now, sadly I see that it is almost a necessary means to protect the FOSS environment. What I am wondering is how fast GPLv3 will be adopted by large players. Any ideas? Will Torvalds embrace it immediately? I hope so...
    • Re:Bleh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ArwynH ( 883499 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @07:09AM (#19350009)

      Considering the people writing the GPL3 are mostly lawyers, no, they don't.

      And they can leave the Software writing to us Programmers, thank you.

    • Like BSD? They didn't about legal issues, just steamed ahead and coded.. They were stuck in legal limbo for years, and the FUD lingered for years after that.
    • Enjoying your job at Microsoft?

      Seriously, making Apache 2 and GPLv3 licensing compatible is a very good thing.
      • by Rycross ( 836649 )
        Look, I agree that the GPLv3 is a good license to have, but not everyone who disagrees is a Microsoft shill. Grow up man.
    • This is the license that protects our freedom. I do write some Free Software and I can tell you that I would not bother doing so if it wasn't for the GPL. I'm looking forward to putting all future versions of my software under GPLv3.
  • by abigsmurf ( 919188 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @06:41AM (#19349819)
    So, the draft removes the right to prosecute someone for cracking protected content? Businesses will love that extra complication for prosecuting hackers or disgruntled employees.

    The patent thing is going to backfire big time. It's going to scare away businesses who would either stand to lose huge amounts of money or because they're unsure about whether it would invalidate patents they already have (what if the software is designed specifically to perform a piece of CAM in a way that's patented? Would that patent become invalid because of this licence? Would patented business practices that use OSS be threatened? Why risk losing millions in licence fees when you could spend a few hundred thousand and fit your systems with software you know doesn't rob you these rights?

    For a licence that was supposed to be simple and easy to understand, section 11 makes for a hard read, even for geeks and I imagine lawyers will love the the potential vague nature of those terms. God knows what a layperson would think when reading it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      So, the draft removes the right to prosecute someone for cracking protected content? Businesses will love that extra complication for prosecuting hackers or disgruntled employees.

      The way I see it, they can no longer prosecute for simply cracking protected content. I see this as being akin to not being able to prosecute for jimmying open a lock. You can still be prosecuted for breaking and entering, for trespassing, for stealing. So these hackers, or disgruntled employees, can no longer be prosecuted for cracking protected content, but surely they can be prosecuted for the cyber equivalent of breaking and entering/trespassing/stealing? I'm no lawyer. Hell, I'm not even American s

      • There are laws to prevent unauthorised access in most countries, however there's also a lot of things which rely on the fact that a file is encrypted for legal protection as the file has to be publically available for a system to work. Actually using this information (say if it's user/pass combinations or some privacy data on it's users) to do something would be illegal but if you've removed all the protections against the content through the GPLv3, I could see if being possible to post any info from cracke
    • by mw13068 ( 834804 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @07:17AM (#19350055)
      The goal of the GPL, the GNU project, and the FSF has always been software freedom, first and foremost. If a business finds no value in making changes to the way they do things to reap the benefits that Free Software brings, then they are free to not use any GPL'ed software. It's as simple as that.

      That said, most of the big businesses currently interested in Free Software, including some which have HUGE patent stores, like IBM have actually participated in the drafting of the GPLv3.

    • by bentcd ( 690786 )
      what if the software is designed specifically to perform a piece of CAM in a way that's patented? Would that patent become invalid because of this licence?

      No. What would happen would be that the party in question could not legally use the GPLv3 as an excuse to use GPL software and so might be in breach of copyright. This is something they would have to dish out with whoever owns the copyright on the sofware in question (FSF or whoever). The most obvious approach for the infringer (if they're in love with t
      • by Dan Ost ( 415913 )
        Actually, if they were the owner of the patent, then by releasing GPL3'd code that implements it, they would be granting a patent license to use the patented method in the code or in derivations of the code.

        Please correct me if I'm wrong.
        • by bentcd ( 690786 )
          Actually, if they were the owner of the patent, then by releasing GPL3'd code that implements it, they would be granting a patent license to use the patented method in the code or in derivations of the code.

          I don't think this is the sort of gift that would be upheld by a court of law. They could say "we won't sue you over these patents" but if they later decided to change their minds, I don't think a judge is going to actually hold them to that promise unless some sort of consideration was involved on part
          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            It's a bit more complicated than that. If Amalgamated Widgets, Inc. releases a GPLv3 driver, they aren't actually binding themselves legally (except that all recipients of the driver have GPLv3 rights). They don't need a license to write software and release it. Therefore, they haven't actually promised anything in that release. They don't have to release the source code even (although that's going to alienate the free software community, if they care). If they use somebody else's GPLv3 code, modify it
    • by FireFury03 ( 653718 ) <slashdot AT nexusuk DOT org> on Friday June 01, 2007 @08:09AM (#19350479) Homepage
      what if the software is designed specifically to perform a piece of CAM in a way that's patented? Would that patent become invalid because of this licence?

      The licence doesn't render your patents invalid. It simply prevents you from suing anyone for patent infringement if the code that infringes your patent was published by you.

      This makes a lot of sense - why would you publish the source code for something if you didn't want people to be able to use it? If you are publishing the source code which does something you've patented and you don't protect people then there really is no point publishing the code in the first place since it is illegal for someone to use it.

      Why risk losing millions in licence fees when you could spend a few hundred thousand and fit your systems with software you know doesn't rob you these rights?

      Why publish source code which could give your competetors an advantage? Clearly publishing code works because you gain an advantage too. Whilest you are potentially helping your competetors, any improvements they make to the code will come back to benefit you.

      This is a very difficult balancing act - on the one hand it's very good for the customers since it forces all the vendors to continually improve their offerings. It's also very good for the vendors since they effectively get thousands of man-hours of work without directly paying for those developers. But on the other hand, it means that the vendor has to put a lot of resources into the project in order to continually improve it - they are never going to get into a situation where they have cornered the market and can lock everyone else out and relax like Microsoft has done over the past few years.

      So to answer your question - you can risk losing millions in licence fees because in return for that risk you might also get licenses from other people worth millions.
      • This makes a lot of sense - why would you publish the source code for something if you didn't want people to be able to use it? If you are publishing the source code which does something you've patented and you don't protect people then there really is no point publishing the code in the first place since it is illegal for someone to use it.

        Meaning the only reason to do this would be to plant code you hold a patent on into free software, allow it to be distributed, then sue everyone who is using the softwar
    • The patent thing is going to backfire big time.

      That's funny. I seem to recall Sun actually looking forward to GPLv3 and that clause specifically. If I recall correctly, they were holding off on releasing some software as Free Software until GPLv3 because they want the extra clauses.

      Considering Sun is the #1 contributor to Free Software as far as business contributions go, I'd have to say that you're incorrect about GPLv3 scaring businesses. That's Microsoft FUD or FUD from people who haven't ever liked the
  • anti-DRM clause (Score:4, Informative)

    by sonamchauhan ( 587356 ) <sonamcNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday June 01, 2007 @07:07AM (#19349989) Journal
    I had a look. The controversial anti-DRM clause seems to be in part #3 of the license:

    No covered work shall be deemed part of an effective technological measure under any applicable law fulfilling obligations under article 11 of the WIPO copyright treaty adopted on 20 December 1996, or similar laws prohibiting or restricting circumvention of such measures.

    When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of technical measures to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of technical measures.


    The definition of "convey":
    To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies, excluding sublicensing. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
    • by weicco ( 645927 )

      In Finland lower court decided that CSS protection used in DVDs isn't "effective technological measure" and even raised the question if there is any such thing. Doesn't this mean that you are allowed to distribute any DRM code under GPLv3 at least in Finland beacause... there's no effective DRM?

      I think this moves forward to higher court and maybe even to highest court (I don't know what they are called in english). If highest court decides that there is no effective measure to protect content, what happens

  • getting to the end (Score:3, Insightful)

    by martin-boundary ( 547041 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @07:13AM (#19350033)
    It's good to read that the GPLv3 will finally be out the door in about three weeks time. It's been a long wait, but I think worth it. I'm looking forward to changing the license boilerplate on all my projects.

    One practical issue: it will be nice if somebody (Debian?) could write a script that makes it easy to scan source hierarchies for GPLv2 comments so they can be replaced consistently with GPLv3. The last time the FSF changed its address, it was a pain to check and change all the boilerplates.

  • by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @07:44AM (#19350225) Homepage
    But don't the anti-patent provisions in GPLv3 only prevent war WITHIN the open source community? In effect, they will stop the Trojan Horse of patented open source code being used to extort money.

    What they DON'T stop is someone without ties to GPLv3 code taking patents and launching an attack. I always thought that IF such an attack would come (at least on a large scale), it would be far more likely to come from someone like Microsoft who would be untouched by any GPLv3 conditions. Small scale bullying might (and in some cases apparently has already) take place, but a large scale "destroy the free software ecosystem" attack I always thought was more likely from someone who had no financial incentive to see free software exist. After all, even patent trolls need someone to attack, and if they kill the free software world there will be nothing left for them to prey on except people who can afford lawyers to fight back. Admittedly they would survive, but I doubt they would be institutionally committed to the destruction of free software.

    I admit it might make a repeat of the SCO fiasco with patent claims instead of contract and copyright laws somewhat less likely, and that's beyond question a good thing, but it doesn't reduce the large scale threat in any important way I can see. It's still a patent version of the MAD directive that's holding things in check, and (like the real Cold War) if anyone starts shooting the whole works (commercial AND open source) could go down the drain (in the US at least, and I am regrettably certain at least a few large corporate interests and US lawmakers will do their best to make the consequences felt elsewhere, if only to avoid competition getting an edge by not having to fork over for lawyers to fight patent issues.

    What we REALLY need is software patent DISARMAMENT. Reform. What have you. I don't doubt ingenious folk in the commercial world will look for some other way to achieve the same end (as some insightful person said - "the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing") but at least this particular gambit will be over.

    The ideal case from our side would be to have protection for software that is given away at no cost (with source code) to the benefit of society. Of course the whole "limited monopoly to promote innovation that is publicly disclosed" bit would need to be debated, but at least we would be HAVING the debate. Software patents are just a manifestation of one view of how society should function. There are other views, and I would much prefer to see the debate take place on a societal level in a serious way than to drain the industry's resources fighting legal skirmishes. Life is too short for that, and there's too much code to write.
    • I believe you are correct that this will not prevent non-parties or third party benificiaries to the GPL from suing for patent violations. However, I don't see the GPL restricting internecine patent warfare within the open-source community because I *can't* imagine an American judge enforcing this provision of the contract which restricts lawsuits: "You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example....you may not initiate litigati
    • Of course; a mere copyright license can't put any restrictions on what some completely unrelated third party does with its patents.

      That said, Microsoft purchased SuSE vouchers from Novell in the recent deal, and it has been selling them on (to Dell, for one), and they don't have an expiration date. According to Eben Moglen, if anybody with such a voucher turns it in for a copy of SuSE after part of the software in SuSE is covered by the GPL3 - then Microsoft will have distributed GPL3 software.

    • Microsoft does distribute some GPLv2 software. I think it's "Unix Services for Windows", or something like that. In fact, they can keep doing that since it's GPLv2.

      What they can't do is distribute GPLv3 software and then expect to use their patents to attack other GPLv3 software developers or distributors. So they probably won't distribute GPLv3 software, but who knows... one day not distributing any GPLv3 software may be a difficult thing for a software company to resist doing.

      If every other business lower
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mgiuca ( 1040724 )
      The idea is that Microsoft is within the open source community now that they are officially distributing SUSE Linux.
  • Would it have killed them to link to the actual draft and documents? Here are the links:

  • by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @08:09AM (#19350485)
    From the summary:

    The draft also does not prohibit Novell from distributing software under GPLv3 'because the patent protection they arranged with Microsoft last November can be turned against Microsoft to the community's benefit,' FSF executive director Peter Brown said."
    Quite correct. But that doesn't quite work if the deal with Microsoft says "this agreement is exclusive". In that case, the only way Novell can abide by that is to distribute nothing under GPLv3, and very possibly nothing under "GPLv2 or later".

    I can't see any other reading of this. Which raises the question: what were Novell smoking when they signed the deal? If Microsoft predicted this kind of clause in GPLv3 (which you can be fairly sure they did), they essentially tricked Novell into signing a contract saying "We're going to stop distributing the very software which is core to our business" and Novell went on record saying how great this contract is.

    I have a lot of trouble believing that. In which case, exactly what patent protection does this contract provide?
    • The reason that Novell can distribute GPLv3 software in spite of their Microsoft deal is simple - the patent restriction in question does not apply to agreements made before 28 March 2007 (see the end of section 11). The reason that the FSF decided to write the clause in that manner is because they felt that Novell could possibly turn this deal around to do good if they chose to do so, and therefore are giving them a pass this time.
    • by rs232 ( 849320 )
      "In which case, exactly what patent protection does this contract provide?"

      Both agree not to sue each others customers in exchange for which Novell lends credence to Microsoft claims that Linux violates its patents. The protection only extends to end-users that Novell gets direct revenue from. So a company reselling Novell solutions would not be covered nor would its customers.

      The covenant only applies to developers who do not receive revenue from SuSE and, at the suggestion of Microsoft, can be exten
  • by PhysicsPhil ( 880677 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @08:20AM (#19350597)
    I'm curious whether all this back-and-forth went on when the GPL v2 was written. Is there anyone here who remembers that process?
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Teancum ( 67324 )
      In addition to the other comments to this post, I would like to mention that "the internet community" or the "open source fans" was a much, much smaller community than currently exists now. And the mere idea that could make some significant money off of open source wasn't nearly so obvious back in the day. Certainly the huge push for DRM garbage and issues related to patents weren't as huge of a deal.... or at least when I mentioned that it was a huge problem Richard Stallman himself in a one-to-one discu
  • How can it be a "Final Draft"? Doesn't "Draft" imply that changes could still be made to it?

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