Stallman, Moglen outline GPL 3 plan
The original drafter of the General Public License (GPL), Richard Stallman, and his top legal assistant, Columbia law professor Eben Moglen, outlined some plans on Thursday for next version of the seminal license. The current GPL 2 was drafted in 1991, but Moglen and Stallman are trying to modernize it.
Though the Free Software Foundation representatives didn't go into details about actual changes expected for version 3, they did say they plan to listen to suggestions from many others.
"The foundation will, before it emits a first discussion draft, publicize the process by which it intends to gather opinion and suggestions," Stallman and Moglen said. "The Free Software Foundation recognizes that the reversioning of the GPL is a crucial moment in the evolution of the free software community, and the foundation intends to meet its responsibilities to the makers, distributors and users of free software."
And they laid out what they see as the GPL's purposes. Among them: to serve as a worldwide copyright license, a code of conduct for free software programmers and the constitution of the free software movement.
They also said that even though commercial interests have become involved, the fundamental goal of the foundation and the GPL--freedom--won't change.
"The Free Software Foundation has never been reluctant to point out that its goals are primarily social and political, not technical or economic," Stallman and Moglen said. "The movement's own goals cannot be subordinated to the economic interests of our friends and allies in industry??Changes to the GPL...must not undermine the underlying movement for freer exchange of knowledge."
They also hinted at areas where commercial interests could conflict with the GPL's principles: "To the extent that the movement has identified technological or legal measures likely to be harmful to freedom, such as 'trusted computing' or a broadening of the scope of patent law, the GPL needs to address those issues from a perspective of political principle and the needs of the movement, not from primary regard for the industrial or commercial consequences."
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank.
