FSF Releases GPLv3 Discussion Draft
Luis Villa provides some links to this release, and the Center for the Study of Digital Property goes in-depth and explains the changes.
The main substantive change seems to be in preventing DRM from restricting the sharing or modification of GPL software. In other words you can protect and encrypt files and code, but not in a way that stops someone from viewing the source and modifying/sharing it.* It again clarifies the core of GPL–making software “free as in speech” and not making everything “free as in beer.”
GPL is not anti-DRM, though I’m sure many people really want it to be. The FSF realizes the commercial needs of the GPL community and needs to finely skirt that line between free software and free of cost.
* I hate the phrase “in other words” because it necessarily begs the question, “Why not just say Y instead of X and Y?” But with so many things legal, translating rules to reality demands specific facts which disinter latent exceptions and fence in the broadness of the rule. Blows.
April 4th, 2007 at 4:44 am
What about the possibility of pulling out of Iraq, letting Iran invade and lose resources fighting their own kind,
and then come in and mop up the dregs?
November 12th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
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