GPLv3 draft is out
Public debate on the first draft of the GNU GPL v3 has begun.
Andy Oram writes, from the formal GPL 3 conference at MIT:
Lots of observers wondered how Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and their advisers would handle such hot issues as remote services (called Application Service Providers in the 1990s) and patents. Surprisingly, the license embodies both the conservatism and the room for experimentation for which we can take U.S. law as a metaphor.[..]
the GPL designers took a much more modest approach to patents than many people expected.[..] In contrast to the tentative steps toward handling remote services and patents, the GPL comes out very strongly against Digital Rights Management[..]
People who have always hated the GPL will show no new warmth to the new version. People who have used the GPL, I predict, will move to the new one.
is also blogging the MIT conference. We can probably look forward to a lively Slashdot thread on Stallman and Moglen’s new brainchild; there’s a piece of first-hand journalism on Wikinews, ELER has a good strip on the subject, as usual, and for those with time on their hands, there’s also the accompanying rationale document. Most people interested in the GPL debate will probably be looking for something like an HTML diff of v2 vs. v3, though.
Finally, here are some first comments culled from the blogosphere: Kaj Arnö, Aigars Mahinovs, Ricardo Gladwell.
Technorati tags: GPL, GNU, Open Source, GPLv3, FSF
