This can be a good or bad thing, depending on whether you’re a smaller firm worried about being slammed with infringement cases by patent trolls or a large company that holds a lot of software patents.

Essentially, what GPLv3 says is that if you use GPL’d software to create a new product, you can’t sue anyone who uses your product to create a new product with patent infringement. A later provision, aimed directly at the Novell-Microsoft cross-licensing deal, further restricts companies by basically saying that you can’t cut a deal to distribute GPL’d software with a patent protection from a third party for which you pay, unless that same patent protection is also granted to anyone else using the software. Here’s McCabe’s analysis:

GPL3 is designed to have much greater reach than GPL2 on the patent side. Companies with significant patent portfolios will need to evaluate the impact of GPL3 code on their patent strategies—in terms of their enforcement choices and their licensing programs. There has been some stated concern about a chilling effect on contributions from large companies because of those patent implications.

That said, to the extent companies are using and distributing GPL3 code that doesn’t relate to key patents in their portfolios, it’s probably not much of an issue. So, as complex as the patent issues are, and as much time and attention that has been paid to those provisions, they likely affect a small group of companies in the end.

Those items may make you feel more positively toward the new version. But you probably shouldn’t put away the worry beads just yet.

Potential Gotchas in GPLv3
1) Version 3 contains language designed to address what the FSF calls “Tivoization.”

A provision of the GPL requires a company using GPL software in its products to make generally available to customers the source code to all the GPL’d software, including any changes that the company made. TiVo, which uses Linux inside the box, has traditionally done this. However, TiVo also placed a clever locking mechanism in the software, such that if it is changed by the user in any way, the box will not operate.

Version 3 slams the door on this practice. It states, in brief, that if you sell a product whose software can be upgraded, you may not prohibit customers from making their own changes. This could have far-reaching consequences.

For example, many home broadband routers are based on Linux, and have firmware that can be upgraded. Under version 3, the router manufacturers would have to allow customers to make their own modifications to the firmware. In fact, they would have to provide documentation on how to do it, since the GPLv3 requires that the company offer “all the necessary installation methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of GPLv3 covered works.” For companies like TiVo, which need to lock out changes to enforce digital rights management (DRM, more on this in a second), it is pretty much a deal killer.