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Page 2 of 3 Being a free software license, the GPL adheres to the afore-mentioned four rights, but it goes further. The most significant addition is that any enhancements made to the software which are subsequently released must also be free software. It is not permissible, under the GPL, to take a program licensed under the GPL, modify it, and then release it as a proprietary package.
In fact, this is considered a big strength where the GPL community assists itself. Some valuable pieces of software have come into being and released under GPL – one notable example is the GNU Readline library which adds text entry line editing and history recall features – and these simply cannot be used by proprietary software developers but they can be used by free software developers.
This does not contradict the first free software right cited earlier; the free software still can be run by the end user for any purpose. Nor is the fourth right violated; the software can be enhanced and redistributed, but there is a catch, namely that the enhanced version must also comply with the GPL. You will note the fourth right is not like the first; it does not say the software can be redistributed for any purpose which allows software developers the ability to place some restrictions here. The GPL authors have exercised this allowance.
The GPL is not merely rhetoric but is recognised as a legally enforceable document. GPL violations are documented at gpl-violations.org and include cases where well-known industry players like Gigabyte, ASUS and TomTom have been made to release source code for software products which were built on top of GPL code but didn’t themselves comply with the GPL and were proprietary packages. In some instances the disputes have gone as far as court with DLink in particular being an offender who refused to acknowledge the legal weight of the GPL but were made to do so with judgment being found against them.
As previously, this doesn’t prevent GPL software being used for commercial purposes. There’s nothing preventing someone sell copies of a modified GPL program – but the modified source code must be available, and the people who buy the program must be allowed to redistribute it and modify it as they so desire.
The GNU GPL version 3
At this time, a new GNU GPL license – version three – is being drafted at this time. The most significant new feature is the explicit right for end users to remove features they do not like from software and run it on the same appliance where the software originally came to them from.
The Free Software Foundation, the body behind GNU, claim today’s modern tech has brought about a new danger to free software, namely, what they call, “tivoization”. In this case, an appliance contains embedded GPL software which has been modified. Now, the vendor has the right to do this under the GPL. Furthermore, if they release the source code for their modified version they are compliant with the GPL.
However, a problem arises if the modified software does something which the user does not like – such as enforce digital rights management (DRM) for instance – but yet the device will not permit its original software to be altered on its own storage or memory. This doesn’t stop people taking the DRM enforcement out and distributing their modified version, they simply are unable to make the device run this new version.
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