The Final GNU GPL v3 License Is Released

Published: July 10, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

After 18 months of back and forth among myriad luminaries in the open source software movement, the Free Software Foundation has finally released the GNU General Public License v3 for use by open source software projects.

If you just can't wait to read the final GNU GPL v3 license, then skip right to it here. The Lesser GPL license has also been updated and released for use, but the related AGPLv3, FDLv2, and SFDL licenses are still being tweaked before they are released by FSF.

While Richard Stallman, the force behind the FSF and the GNU set of open source programs, founded the open source movement 23 years ago, the GNU GPL v1 license was only put out in 1989, and was followed in pretty rapid succession by the GPL v2 license in 1991. A lot has changed in the software world since 1991, and the GPL v3 license was written expressly to deal with some threats that Stallman and Eben Moglen, his almost equally famous lawyer, see encroaching on the open source software movement. While Stallman has been asking for input on the GPL v3 license officially since January 2006, he began mulling over what he though needed to be done a year earlier.

"The GNU GPL makes sense in terms of its purpose: freedom and social solidarity," explained Stallman in a statement accompanying the launch of the GPL v3 license, which has seen some pretty substantial last minute changes to take into account new twists in the Linux market. "Trying to understand it in terms of the goals and values of open source is like trying use a CD drive's retractable drawer as a cupholder. You can use it for that, but that is not what it was designed for."

Earlier drafts of the GPL v3 were being interpreted by some as putting the kibosh on patent covenant alliances such as those formed between Microsoft and Linux allies Novell, Linspire, and Xandros. Rather than try to kill off such deals, Stallman and Moglen turned it around, and with GPL v3, they are arguing that such a deal implies that all projects using software that is protected by one patent covenant deal is then extended to all distributors of that software. In plain English, if you offer protection to Novell, it is automatically offered to Red Hat and all the other Linux distributors in as much as they use the same Linux kernels.

The GNU GPL v3 license also obstructs the use of certain software features that do not allow for software to be modified on open source projects, which the FSF refers to as "tivoization" since the TiVo television recording appliance runs on Linux but will not allow anyone to make changes to the TiVo box. The whole point of free and open source software, at least as far as Stallman and his cohort are concerned, is the ability to make changes to software and to compel for changes to be distributed so everyone benefits from the intellectual energy used to make changes. If you put up barriers to the free movement of software, you cannot get evolution to work properly.

Stallman released 15 of the GNU project's software packages under GPL v3 in making the announcement, and committed to making the whole GNU Project suit available under GPL v3 in the next few months. About two-thirds of the open source projects in the world use a GPL license to govern their software copyrights and patents. It will be interesting to see how the GPL v3 is adopted and how it is commingled with GPL v2 and LGPL v2 licenses as well as other licenses.

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