GPL 3.0: Open Source Renews Its License

Tue, January 03, 2006

With this entry, guest blogger Bernard Golden begins his series of commentaries on the ongoing revision process for the General Public License.

Open source has brought a new set of rules to the table of which every IT shop needs to be aware. First and foremost are the licenses under which open source software is distributed – and this is a topic you’ll hear a lot about in 2006 as the most common open source license – the General Public License (GPL) – releases a draft of its third version.

Why are open source licenses such a big deal? They enforce all the benefits of open source: freedom to use the software as you see fit, ability to modify the product via the included source code, and right to redistribute the modified code.

The most widely used open source license is the GPL. In addition to the usual open source license conditions, the GPL also requires users to redistribute any modified code under the same GPL conditions. In other words, if you tweak a GPL-based product and distribute your modifications, you must offer your users the same rights to your software as you had for the original product.

Depending upon how you use GPL-based open source, this condition can be either trivial or monumental. If you modify GPL code, but never redistribute (for instance, you’re an IT organization that uses the product solely internally), this condition makes no difference to you. If you’re a packaged software vendor, however, and you distribute GPL-based code, you run the risk of having to distribute your entire source base to the world. For this reason, GPL is often referred to as a "viral license," since it can “infect” proprietary source code and turn it into open source code.

Now the Free Software Foundation, promulgator of the GPL, is about to release a draft of GPL 3. I predict a tremendous amount of discussion and controversy over the next year as the FSF moves through the draft process. Why? Because while the FSF claims modest goals for the update, it is also rumored to be considering a couple of changes to the GPL that could severely impact the IT industry.

First is the possibility that the GPL will be modified to make it easier for GPL and other open source-licensed code to coexist in a single piece of software. Today, language in the GPL overrides other licenses. That means that Berkeley license-based software that integrates some GPL-based code could get converted automatically (and perhaps unintentionally) to GPL. If the GPL changes to better support mix-and-match licenses, that is all to the good.

1 2 next page »

You are here: Technology Topics » Development » News Feature

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