Latest Proposed Draft of GPLv3 Gets Mixed Reviews

Initial reactions to the latest proposed draft of a popular license for free and open-source software (FOSS) have been wide-ranging, with the changes winning some kind words from the creator of Linux and a critical bashing from an industry association.

By China Martens

IDG News Service — Initial reactions to the latest proposed draft of a popular license for free and open-source software (FOSS) have been wide-ranging, with the changes winning some kind words from the creator of Linux and a critical bashing from an industry association.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) released the penultimate draft of the GNU general public license version 3 (GPLv3) Wednesday, with a focus on addressing concerns raised by a patent cross-licensing agreement struck between Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc., the distributor of Suse Linux, in November. Parts of the Linux operating system including its kernel are licensed under GPL version 2.

The GPL gives users the right to freely study, copy, modify, reuse, share and redistribute software.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has been highly critical of the two previous drafts of the GPLv3, particularly in relation to its stance on DRM (digital rights management) technology, and has said he has no plans to adopt it for the Linux kernel.

Stressing that it’s his initial take on the new draft, he wrote in an e-mail response to a request for comment Wednesday that the third draft is "a huge improvement on the previous ones." He’s particularly impressed by the work the FSF has done on revising the language referring to patents.

"In fact, the new draft looks much better wrt [with respect to] patents -- the old 7 (b) section allowing for patent retaliation clauses seems to have been excised entirely, and all the other (very fundamental) problems with 7(b) in general have been removed," he wrote. The issue with the earlier drafts of the 7 (b) section was that they encouraged license proliferation effectively allowing different projects and individuals to add their own restrictions on top of GPLv3 and hence lead to the creation of brand-new licenses.

"[In the new draft] not only were the fundamental problems in 7(b) basically removed entirely, some of the ’we control the hardware environment too’ language has at least been narrowed down a lot," Torvalds wrote. "I still think that is totally mis-designed, but at least the damage is much narrower in scope now, so in that sense the last draft is a big improvement on the previous ones."

As for whether the particular issue around the deal between Novell and Microsoft really merits addressing in the GPLv3, he doesn’t know and is still considering whether the new draft is an advance on the GPLv2 license, which appeared in 1991.

"Whether

1 2 3 next page »

You are here: Technology Topics » Development » News Short

Most Recent Open Source Stories

White Papers »

It's A Bold Statement from IBM: "the one system that will unite all the others."

With 1.5 billion instructions in one second (BIPS), while consuming less energy than ever before, Wintergreen Research says IT departments need to sit up and take notice of this hybrid system that combines the System z with servers.

Has Your Server Infrastructure Kept Pace with End User Demands?

Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Deliver Private Cloud Database as a Service with VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.

Reliable Disaster Protection with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.

Introduction to VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter