[ale] GPL3

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Sat, 2007-06-30 at 15:25 -0400, James P. Kinney III wrote:

> In case people missed it, the GPL3 is officially released. GNU
> foundation updated the gnu tar utility to be GPL3 as well.


Along with some others; the rest of the FSF's software will be converted
in months to come.


> Slashdot has a link to a talk by Eben Moglen
> http://www.archive.org/details/EbenMoglenLectureEdinburghJune2007text



I intend on listening to that tomorrow.  I managed to actually miss this
link from /., so thank you for posting it.  I did make the time, though,
to watch the Free Software Foundation's noon webcast for the release of
the GPLv3.  I was rather happy to see that, and even moreso since it
does not appear that it was archived anywhere.  I rather expected the
FSF to put up the video of the announcement on their site so that others
could view it if they were not able to attend the webcast.


> I am about 1/3 through it and something caught my eye. In the process of
> getting GPL3 ready, many, many people had input. Many IT companies and
> IT users participated in the process that led to GPL3.  All of that is
> good.
> 
> It was the brief line "- in the end, we got agreement. We got
> consensus." that struck me as an outstanding accomplishment. To obtain
> CONSENSUS is such a clear statement of power behind the idea, it sent
> chills up my spine.


That was the beauty for me of the process that they went through in
drafting the GPLv3.  At each stage of the process, they placed up on
their web site a place where one could comment on the draft
collaboratively with others.  Quite a fine setup, actually, that I would
like to see make its way into blogging systems:  You highlighted the
specific text that you wanted to comment on, and a little AJAX setup
would let you comment on the particular sentence or phrase that you
highlighted.  The more comments on an area, the deeper the color
appeared, and so forth.  It was, I thought, a very innovative way to
solicit truly free-form and specific comments.  It also had a voting
system that would allow you to agree or disagree with any given comment,
which was pretty nifty as well.


> I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone to participates
> on this mailing list. I would like to thank everyone who participates in
> the creation and support of software that is licensed under the GPL2. I
> would like to encourage everyone who writes software to look deeply at
> the GPL3 and give serious thought to making that the de facto software
> license standard for the next release.


Absolutely.  It is, I think, unfortunate that the Linux kernel will not
be able to join in the GPLv3---for starters, there is no single
copyright holder; secondly, if the leaders of the pack were to decide to
make the move, there would be a lot of code from lost/dead contributors
that would have to be ripped and replaced, since the Linux kernel is GPL
without any additional clause to permit the user to select a later
version at their discretion.

I do think that this means that while Free Software will progress that
the future is uncertain.  Linus has stated in the past that he might
consider making the attempt to move the Linux kernel to GPLv3 if Sun
released OpenSolaris under GPLv3.  Andrew Morton seems to be against the
idea of the GPLv3, too.  That having been said, what happens if
OpenSolaris goes GPLv3, Java goes GPLv3, and the Free Software
Foundation jumps to that supporting that system?  The Hurd will likely
never be complete; the last time I checked, it still couldn't be run on
(my) real hardware.  Linux systems are gaining a great deal of ground
now, and I think that it would be tragic for an inability to relicense
the code to impede further progress or cause destruction to the progress
that has already been made.  Having tried OpenSolaris, it isn't quite
what I would call ready for prime-time yet, there is a concrete
possibility that if the FSF gets behind it, so will a mass of other free
software developers.


> As a society, we are standing at the edge of precipice. I feel very
> strongly that it is only though freedoms put in writing and defended at
> all costs that we will have the opportunity to spread wings and soar
> instead of plummet to a finality. I do not refer to the United States of
> America as the embodiment of this society. But instead I refer to all of
> humanity. It is only through the freedoms established in 1776 did this
> nation progress to it's current global apex. It will only be through the
> conceptual process of understanding something as important as the
> intellectual freedoms as defined by the principles in the GPL3 that this
> global society can take the next step and truly become magnificent.


I share your broad view; I do hope that the current Linux developers
will share it as well, and find a way to bring the core of our favorite
operating system into this new era that we have entered.  The GPLv3 has
gone a long way towards the goal of free software.  I think that the
final product is something that the entire community can be proud of,
and I am eager to see all free software become available under the GPL3.
Having read with the text of the license myself, the code that I write
shall henceforth be released under it---which means that my as-of-yet
unreleased project work will, should it ever see the light of day, be
licensed under GPLv3.

Version 2 of the GPL was good while it was here and current; version 3
covers many of the issues that (at least I, for one) could never have
imagined coming up as issues in free software since I became involved in
it in 1996.  I am also looking forward to the new releases of the other
licenses currently in the draft process from the Free Software
Foundation.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here read Free as in Freedom, the
O'Reilly biography of RMS published under the GNU FDL?  I thought it was
a very fascinating read, and it brought me much insight into the
motivation and reasoning behind Stallman and the Free Software
Foundation.

    --- Mike

P.S. Out of habit, some of the typographic characters in here were UTF-8
characters.  I think I nixed them all and replaced them with ASCII
transliterations, but if I missed any, I apologize.

--
Michael B. Trausch
           michael.trausch at gmail.com
Phone: (404) 592-5746
                          Jabber IM:
           michael.trausch at gmail.com
Demand Freedom!  Use open and free protocols, standards, and software!
Support free speech---it is the most valuable freedom we have!
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