So, he's ensured that patent deals - which have led to much fear, uncertainty and doubt being spread by Microsoft - cannot be signed. Is that such a bad thing? Is it a bad thing to demand that Microsoft should be asked to show concrete proof of its claims that Linux and other free and open source software violates 235 patents? Or should we accept anything that emanates from Redmond as the gospel truth?

Is it such a bad thing that GPLv3 forbids Tivoisation? Indeed what is this phenomenon? To get down to basics, what was the need for the GPL to be updated at all?

Changes were necessary because some manufacturers had managed to adhere to the word of GPL Version 2 - and at the same time evade it. With increasing use of digital rights management (DRM) - or digital restrictions management as some put it - and patents, to corner and control market segments, changes were deemed necessary to prevent the public being denied what the FSF considers to be essential freedoms.

Take the time-shifting recording device, the Tivo. It runs a modified version of the Linux kernel; the source for this, and all other software that goes to make up the gadget's operating system, are provided to a buyer. But there is no way that one can recompile the kernel and get it to function because the Tivo is designed to shut down if code which has been modified and not authorised by the company is used to try and run it.

GPLv3 will not allow this. Who benefits? The end user.

There is no prohibition on DRM. As Stallman put it to a seminar in Bangalore last September: "You can modify a GPL covered program to do anything at all, including restricting the person using it. And you could distribute that to other people, but we insist that they have the four freedoms so that they are free to take out the malicious feature that you put in."