Re: GPLv3 comedy unfolding -- FSF: "A Quick Guide to GPLv3"

[Alexander Terekhov]

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html

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A Quick Guide to GPLv3  

by Brett Smith

[This article is also available in PDF and reStructuredText formats.]

After a year and a half of public consultation, thousands of comments,
and four drafts, version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) was
finally published on June 29. While there's been a lot of discussion
about the license since the first draft appeared, not many people have
talked about the benefits that it provides developers. We've published
this guide to fill that gap. We'll start with a brief refresher on free
software, copyleft, and the goals of the GPL. We'll then review the
major changes in the license to see how they advance those goals and
benefit developers.

The Foundations of the GPLNobody should be restricted by the software
they use. There are four freedoms that every user should have:

the freedom to use the software for any purpose, 
the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, 
the freedom to change the software to suit your needs, and 
the freedom to share the changes you make. 

When a program offers users all of these freedoms, we call it free
software.

Developers who write software can release it under the terms of the GNU
GPL. When they do, it will be free software and stay free software, no
matter who changes or distributes the program. We call this copyleft:
the software is copyrighted, but instead of using those rights to
restrict users like proprietary software does, we use them to ensure
that every user has freedom.

We update the GPL to protect its copyleft from being undermined by legal
or technological developments. The most recent version protects users
from three recent threats:

Tivoization: Some companies have created various different kinds of
devices that run GPLed software, and then rigged the hardware so that
they can change the software that's running, but you cannot. If a device
can run arbitrary software, it's a general-purpose computer, and its
owner should control what it does. When a device thwarts you from doing
that, we call that tivoization. 

Laws prohibiting free software: Legislation like the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act and the European Union Copyright Directive make it a crime
to write or share software that can break DRM. These laws should not
interfere with the rights the GPL grants you. 

Discriminatory patent deals: Microsoft has recently started telling
people that they will not sue free software users for patent
infringement—as long as you get the software from a vendor that's paying
Microsoft for the privilege. Ultimately, Microsoft is trying to collect
royalties for the use of free software, which interferes with users'
freedom. No company should be able to do this. 

Version 3 also has a number of improvements to make the license easier
for everyone to use and understand. But even with all these changes,
GPLv3 isn't a radical new license; instead it's an evolution of the
previous version. Though a lot of text has changed, much of it simply
clarifies what GPLv2 said. With that in mind, let's review the major
changes in GPLv3, and talk about how they improve the license for users
and developers.

Neutralizing Laws That Prohibit Free Software – But Not Forbidding
DRMYou're probably familiar with the Digital Restrictions Management
(DRM) on DVDs and other media. You're probably also familiar with the
laws that make it illegal to write your own tools to bypass those
restrictions, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the European
Union Copyright Directive. Nobody should be able to stop you from
writing any code that want, and GPLv3 protects this right for you.

It's always possible to use GPLed code to write software that implements
DRM. However, if someone does that with code protected by GPLv3, section
3 says that the system will not count as an effective technological
"protection" measure. This means that if you break the DRM, you'll be
free to distribute your own software that does that, and you won't be
threatened by the DMCA or similar laws.

As usual, the GNU GPL does not restrict what people do in software; it
just stops them from restricting others.

Protecting Your Right to Tinker

Tivoization is a dangerous attempt to curtail users' freedom: the right
to modify your software will become meaningless if none of your
computers let you do it. GPLv3 stops tivoization by requiring the
distributor to provide you with whatever information or data is
necessary to install modified software on the device. This may be as
simple as a set of instructions, or it may include special data such as
cryptographic keys or information about how to bypass an integrity check
in the hardware. It will depend on how the hardware was designed—but no
matter what information you need, you must be able to get it.

This requirement is limited in scope. Distributors are still allowed to
use cryptographic keys for any purpose, and they'll only be required to
disclose a key if you need it to modify GPLed software on the device
they gave you. The GNU Project itself uses GnuPG to prove the integrity
of all the software on its FTP site, and measures like that are
beneficial to users. GPLv3 does not stop people from using cryptography;
we wouldn't want it to. It only stops people from taking away the rights
that the license provides you—whether through patent law, technology, or
any other means.

Stronger Protection Against Patent Threats

In the 17 years since GPLv2 was published, the software patent landscape
has changed considerably, and free software licenses have developed new
strategies to address them. GPLv3 reflects these changes too. Whenever
someone conveys software covered by GPLv3 that they've written or
modified, they must provide every recipient with any patent licenses
necessary to exercise the rights that the GPL gives them. In addition to
that, if any licensee tries to use a patent suit to stop another user
from exercising those rights, their license will be terminated.
What this means for users and developers is that they'll be able to work
with GPLv3-covered software without worrying that a desperate
contributor will try to sue them for patent infringement later. With
these changes, GPLv3 affords its users more defenses against patent
aggression than any other free software license.

Clarifying License Compatibility

If you found some code and wanted to incorporate it into a GPLed
project, GPLv2 said that the license on the other code was not allowed
to have any restrictions that were not already in GPLv2. As long as that
was the case, we said the license was GPL-compatible.

However, some licenses had requirements that weren't really restrictive,
because they were so easy to comply with. For example, some licenses say
that they don't give you permission to use certain trademarks. That's
not really an additional restriction: if that clause wasn't there, you
still wouldn't have permission to use the trademark. We always said
those licenses were compatible with GPLv2, too.

Now, GPLv3 explicitly gives everyone permission to use code that has
requirements like this. These new terms should help clear up
misunderstandings about which licenses are GPL-compatible, why that is,
and what you can do with GPL-compatible code.

New Compatible Licenses

In addition to clarifying the rules about licenses that are already
GPL-compatible, GPLv3 is also newly compatible with a few other
licenses. The Apache License 2.0 is a prime example. Lots of great free
software is available under this license, with strong communities
surrounding it. We hope that this change in GPLv3 will foster more
cooperation and sharing within the free software community. The chart
below helps illustrate some common compatibility relationships between
different free software licenses:

[LOL chart LOL]

Arrows pointing from one license to another indicate that the first
license is compatible with the second. This is true even if you follow
multiple arrows to get from one license to the other; so, for example,
the ISC license is compatible with GPLv3. GPLv2 is compatible with GPLv3
if the program allows you to choose "any later version" of the GPL,
which is the case for most software released under this license. This
diagram is not comprehensive (see our licenses page for a more complete
list of licenses compatible with GPLv2 and GPLv3), but plainly
illustrates that GPLv3 is compatible with just about everything GPLv2
is, and then some.

The GNU Affero GPL version 3 has also been brought into the fold. The
original Affero GPL was designed to ensure that all users of a web
application would be able to receive its source. The GNU Affero GPL
version 3 broadens this goal: it is applicable to all
network-interactive software, so it will also work well for programs
like game servers. The additional provision is also more flexible, so
that if someone uses AGPLed source in an application without a network
interface, they'll only have to provide source in the same sort of way
the GPL has always required. By making these two licenses compatible,
developers of network-interactive software will be able to strengthen
their copyleft while still building on top of the mature body of GPLed
code available to them.

More Ways for Developers to Provide Source

One of the fundamental requirements of the GPL is that when you
distribute object code to users, you must also provide them with a way
to get the source. GPLv2 gave you a few ways to do this, and GPLv3 keeps
those intact with some clarification. It also offers you new ways to
provide source when you convey object code over a network. For instance,
when you host object code on a web or FTP server, you can simply provide
instructions that tell visitors how to get the source from a third-party
server. Thanks to this new option, fulfilling this requirement should be
easier for many small distributors who only make a few changes to large
bodies of source.

The new license also makes it much easier to convey object code via
BitTorrent. First, people who are merely downloading or seeding the
torrent are exempt from the license's requirements for conveying the
software. Then, whoever starts the torrent can provide source by simply
telling other torrent users where it is available on a public network
server.

These new options help keep the GPL in line with community standards for
offering source, without making it harder for users to get.

Less Source to Distribute: New System Libraries Exception

Both versions of the GPL require you to provide all the source necessary
to build the software, including supporting libraries, compilation
scripts, and so on. They also draw the line at System Libraries: you're
not required to provide the source for certain core components of the
operating system, such as the C library.

GPLv3 has adjusted the definition of System Library to include software
that may not come directly with the operating system, but that all users
of the software can reasonably be expected to have. For example, it now
also includes the standard libraries of common programming languages
such as Python and Ruby.

The new definition also makes it clear that you can combine GPLed
software with GPL-incompatible System Libraries, such as OpenSolaris' C
library, and distribute them both together. These changes will make life
easier for free software distributors who want to provide these
combinations to their users.

A Global License

GPLv2 talks about "distribution" a lot—when you share the program with
someone else, you're distributing it. The license never says what
distribution is, because the term was borrowed from United States
copyright law. We expected that judges would look there for the
definition. However, we later found out that copyright laws in other
countries use the same word, but give it different meanings. Because of
this, a judge in such a country might analyze GPLv2 differently than a
judge in the United States.

GPLv3 uses a new term, "convey," and provides a definition for that
term. "Convey" has the same meaning we intended for "distribute," but
now that this is explained directly in the license, it should be easy
for people everywhere to understand what we meant. There are other minor
changes throughout the license that will also help ensure it is applied
consistently worldwide.

When the Rules Are Broken: A Smooth Path to Compliance

Under GPLv2, if you violated the license in any way, your rights were
automatically and permanently lost. The only way to get them back was to
petition the copyright holder. While a strong defense against violations
is valuable, this policy could cause a lot of headache when someone
accidentally ran afoul of the rules. Asking all the copyright holders
for a formal restoration of the license could be burdensome and costly:
a typical GNU/Linux distribution draws upon the work of thousands.

GPLv3 offers a reprieve for good behavior: if you violate the license,
you'll get your rights back once you stop the violation, unless a
copyright holder contacts you within 60 days. After you receive such a
notice, you can have your rights fully restored if you're a first-time
violator and correct the violation within 30 days. Otherwise, you can
work out the issue on a case-by-case basis with the copyright holders
who contacted you, and your rights will be restored afterward.

Compliance with the GPL has always been the top priority of the FSF
Compliance Lab and other groups enforcing the license worldwide. These
changes ensure that compliance remains the top priority for enforcers,
and gives violators incentive to comply.

The Latest and Greatest

Some of these changes probably seem less important to you than others.
That's okay. Every project is different, and needs different things from
its license. But odds are that a number of these improvements will help
you and your work.

And taken as a whole, all these upgrades represent something more: we
made a better copyleft. It does more to protect users' freedom, but it
also enables more cooperation in the free software community. But
updating the license is only part of the job: in order for people to get
the benefits it offers, developers need to use GPLv3 for their projects,
too. By releasing your own software under the new license, everyone who
deals with it—users, other developers, distributors, even lawyers—will
benefit. We hope you'll use GPLv3 for your next release.

If you'd like to learn more about upgrading your project to GPLv3, the
FSF Compliance Lab would be happy to assist you. On our web site, you
can find basic instructions for using the license, and an FAQ addressing
common concerns that people have about it. If your situation is more
complicated than that, please contact us and we'll do what we can to
help you with your transition. Together, we can help protect freedom for
all users.

Created by brett 
Last modified 2007-11-08 02:33 PM 
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regards,
alexander.

--
"The revolution might take significantly longer than anticipated."

                                     -- The GNU Monk Harald Welte