Copyright Law

New GPL3 Unleashed

By Peter Moldave

The new GPLv3 is being unveiled here at MIT as we speak (January 16, 2006, 10am).

Initial reaction — a thoughtful non-incendiary draft. The biggest changes are in the area of digital rights management and patent retaliation. The anticipated “ASP” clause is there in a relatively benign version (i.e. if a supplied of software allows GPL code to be available, you need to keep that mechanism). There is a lot of clean-up of language, especially in the area of making it internationally compatible. In addition, there is a specific clause that would allow inadvertent violations to be cured, a source of some nervousness in the past.

The pitch (from fsf.org) is any software utilized under GPL2 will be compliant with GPL3.

More analysis as it becomes available. In the mean time, the text is posted at http://gplv3.fsf.org/draft.

Full post as published by OpenSourceLegal on January 16, 2006 (boomark / email).