Hi all, About GPL licensing for laymen:
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?src=rss&id=1773 Cheers, Subir --- Licensing for laymen - GPL explained By James Archibald<http://www.tectonic.co.za/viewwriter.php?name=James%20Archibald>3 October, 2007 A recent report <http://linux-watch.com/files/misc/GPLv2_vs_GPLv3.pdf>, "GPLv2 vs. GPLv3: The two seminal open source licenses, their roots, consequences, and repercussions", compiled by Liz Laffan of VisonMobile<http://www.visionmobile.com/>, examines the new terms and differences introduced by the third version of the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) and assesses the probable impact it will have on the software market in general and the mobile industry in particular. The GPL was first developed by Free Software Foundation<http://www.fsf.org/>founder, Richard Stallman <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman> in 1989. The licence challenged standard proprietary licences, supplanting the familiar copyright with copyleft <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft>. The licence's influence and importance within free and open source software (FOSS) can be seen by the fact that the report notes "the vast majority (typically 60% to 70%) of all open source projects are licensed under the GPLv2." "The purpose of this new licence is to address some of the areas identified for improvement and clarification in GPLv2 - such as patent indemnity, internationalisation and remedies for inadvertant license infringement." It goes on to say that between the publication of the new licence in July and the writing of the report in September, nearly 600 FOSS projects moved from GPLv2 to GPLv3. The report explains the differences between GPLv3 and GPLv2: "Firstly it provides more clarity on patent licences and attempts to clarify what is meant by both a distribution and derivative works. Secondly it revokes the immediate termination of license clause in favour of licensee opportunities to 'fix' any violations within a given time-period. "In addition there are explicit 'Additional Terms' which permit users to choose from a fixed set of alternative terms which can modify the standard GPLv3 terms." In compiling the new licence, the aim was to plug gaps and loopholes as well as clarify areas of ambiguity. The two issues that have caused the biggest stir are those that deal with Tivoization<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization>and patent protection, which was introduced into the draft after Novell signed a patent protection agreement in a deal<http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1256>with Microsoft last November. For those who are not intimidated by hefty legal documents, the full terms of the licence can be viewed here <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html> . --- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ FOSS Nepal mailing list: [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/foss-nepal To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Community website: http://www.fossnepal.org/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
