In praise of the GPLv3

Sam Varghese
Sunday, 01 July 2007 07:50

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft Office 365

Of course, it means more work for the companies which blithely take other people's labour and profit from it - and, whenever possible, avoid contributing anything back. Is it such a bad thing that entities which rake in what can only be described as indecent amounts of moolah are asked to give something back???

There will be plenty of misinformation around the GPLv3 - and a lot of it spread by writers who see it as a threat to their own business. The reasoning runs thus: "More commercialisation of the FOSS industry will mean more advertising - and that means more profits for our businesses. Let's oppose anything that comes in the way."

Or as one of these so-called journalists put it, the GPLv3 is out but does anyone care?

Well, I have news for this gentleman (and I use the term advisedly). Andrew Tridgell cares. Jeremy Allison does too. There is a host of developers who care. And they are the ones who will have the final say. Linus Torvalds may not agree right now. But it's early days.

To keep this whole thing in perspective, let's remember that if Stallman had not walked out on an extremely lucrative job and started the FSF, millions of us who use FOSS software and avoid a host of problems thereby, would still be tearing our hair out in frustration as we deal with software like Vista .

Let's not forget our origins. And while doing so, let's gratefully acknowledge the debt that we all owe Richard Matthew Stallman.