[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“Late, and over a year in development, the GNU General Public
License version three (GPLv3) is finally here. The GPL is important
as it’s the most widely used Free Software license, with around
seventy percent of Free Software released under its terms. It is
unofficially regarded as the constitution for the Free Software
movement. Already criticisms are being aimed at the new work,
mainly from people and companies who didn’t take part in the
drafting of it. The amazing thing is how many large corporations
actually did take part in the drafting process for the GPLv3.“Back in 1991 when Richard Stallman (the author of the GPL and
creator of the Free Software Foundation) released the second
version of the GPL, no one much cared. Only a few ‘Free Software’
enthusiasts like myself paid attention and bothered to read and
understand it. Sixteen years later the release of version three has
drawn comments directly from Microsoft and IBM lawyers
enthusiastically participated in the drafting of it. How times have
changed…”