| GPL 3 goodness |
Jan. 17, 2006
I don't pretend to be a lawyer, but I do know a bit about open-source licensing and I, for one, am greeting the arrival of the first public draft of the GPL Version 3 with a great sigh of relief.
In the years since the last GPL (General Public License) revision, intellectual property has gone from being, at most, an afterthought to most programmers, to being an issue of major concern. Mind you, the vast majority of developers never wanted to give a hoot about patents and copyrights, but today's legal and business world has rendered that impossible.
Fortunately, Richard M. Stallman and the FSF (Free Software Foundation) have made it as easy as possible for developers to wrap their minds around the GPL open-source license, and they've continued to do so with this major new release.
Better still, if you still have trouble working out what's what in this new draft, the FSF is offering a rationale, which doubles as a FAQ for the new license.
As I read the new license, here are the highlights. First, the GPL 3.0 is not coming out strongly against software patents. While the authors come right out and say, "This worldwide shift in patent law has brought about immense harm and injustice," they don't feel a software license is the right place to directly challenge patents.
Therefore, while "the only real solution to the problem of software patents is to abolish them," the GPL addresses patents by making it explicit that "any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all." In short, software underneath the GPL 3 can't be encumbered with patent royalties or obligations.
At the same time, it doesn't include broad forms of patent retaliation. There were early reports that the new GPL would contain such language, but they proved to be false.
It does have one narrow form of patent retaliation. If a GPL "licensee brings a patent infringement lawsuit against anyone for activities relating to a work based on the program," then their rights to modify or use the GPLed program are terminated.
I'm please about how the authors are handling the patent issues. Besides agreeing with the FSF that there's little proof that patent retaliation would actually work, adding broad patent retaliation clauses would only give the GPL 3 a level of complexity that would make it far harder to understand or use.
The FSF, however, took a much stronger stance against DRM (digital rights management). "As a campaign to limit users' rights, the adoption of DRM is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the free software movement. Unfree software implementing DRM technology is simply a prison in which users can be put to deprive them of the rights that the law would otherwise allow them. Our aim is, and must be, the abolition of DRM as a social practice."
Amen, brother!
I understand the need for copyright protection, but DRM is not the way to do it. Besides forbidding people the freedom to make use of materials they've licensed or bought, whether it's putting a copy of a song on their MP3 player or gaining full access to a program's code, DRM has several technical problems.
First, as we've seen time and again, DRM can't stop a technically savvy user from accessing his information anyway. Legally, despite what the RIAA and MPAA may have to say about the matter, DRM software may be breaking the law.
Finally, by its very nature, DRM software is a form of malware. It's designed to interfere with your computer. At best, this is a nuisance. At worst, like in the Sony DRM case, it becomes a channel for computer cracking -- and even more dire unexpected consequences have been suggested.
I'm very pleased that the FSF is directly addressing the evil that is DRM.
At the end of the day, I think that the GPL 3 authors have done well in their goal of obliging "those who have asked us for a simpler and shorter GPL, but we had to give priority to making GPLv3 do the job that needs to be done."
Yes, it is more complex, but, to my eyes, it's no more complex than it needs to be, given a world where software development decisions are increasingly ending up being decided in the court-room.
Of course, it's possible that the language will be simplified. This is, after all, just the first draft. But, I have to say that I think it's an excellent start, and I, for one, could live with it quite happily as it's written now.
--Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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