New GNU licence delayed

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 29 March 2007 08:45

Opinion and Analysis

 To quote from the draft, it "...deals with the most acute danger posed by discrimination among customers, by ensuring that any party who distributes others’ GPL-covered programs, and makes promises of patent safety limited to some but not all recipients of copies of those specific programs, automatically extends its promises of patent safety to cover all recipients of all copies of the covered works."

And to prevent such things happening in the future, the draft says that any entity, which is already part of a deal which provides patent cover in the manner that the Novell deal does, cannot distribute software that is under the GPLv3. There is a cutoff date of March 28 for this provision.

While the Novell deal will come within the deadline, the draft notes that the earlier provision - the extension of the promise of patent safety - will effectively neuter the deal.

"We believe it is sufficient to ensure either the deal’s voluntary modification by Microsoft or its reduction to comparative harmlessness. Novell expected to gain commercial advantage from its patent deal with Microsoft; the effects of the fourth paragraph in undoing the harm of that deal will necessarily be visited upon Novell."

While Linux creator Linus Torvalds has not been a fan of the GPLv3, categorically stating that the kernel would remain under GPLv2 as it is now, he has welcomed the third draft as an improvement on earlier versions.

Torvalds had expressed concerns about the way GPLv3 addressed digital rights management and also the possibiltiy of the existence of multiple incompatible versions of the licence; these have now been toned down, he told CNET.

He also left open the possibility that the kernel would ultimately come under the new licence, something which would be very welcome for the FSF and the entire FOSS community.