Newest GPL draft leaves Novell in the clear

The Free Software Foundation released the final draft of an updated General Public License on Thursday, a draft that prohibits future deals similar to the Microsoft-Novell patent pact but lets that one go ahead.

The Novell-Microsoft deal, in which Microsoft agreed to sell coupons for Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server and not to sue buyers for patent infringement, raised the foundation's ire when the companies announced it in November 2006. The previous GPL 3 draft had banned distributing software covered by such deals, but the foundation hadn't decided whether the document should apply to all of them of just future ones.

The final, "last-call" GPL 3 draft bans only future deals for what it described as "tactical" reasons in a 32-page explanation of changes (click for PDF). That means Novell doesn't have to worry about distributing software in SLES that's governed by the GPL 3.

"We believe we can do more to protect the community by allowing Novell to use software under GPL version 3 than by forbidding it to do so," the foundation said. Because Microsoft is distributing the coupons, once SLES includes GPL 3 software, the license will convey patent protections to anyone who receive the software, even if not via the Microsoft coupons, the foundation said.

As justification, the foundation referred to patent-specific language in the latest GPL 3 draft: "If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or arrangement, you convey, or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a covered work, and grant a patent license to some of the parties receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate, modify or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license you grant is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered work and works based on it."

The GPL is the most widely used license in the free and open-source software realm, governing such projects as the Linux kernel, the Samba file server software and the MySQL database. The final version of GPL 3 is due by June 28.

Drafting the new license has been a fractious process, but Eben Moglen, the Columbia University law school professor who has led much of the effort, believes consensus is forming. That agreement is particularly important in the open-source realm, where differing license requirements can erect barriers between different open-source projects.

As expected, the latest GPL 3 draft also restores an earlier goal, compatibility with the Apache License. That could help to lower one such open-source barrier.

[MSSlayer]

Time will tell

Maybe this is a proper compromise, we shall see.

I still don't think that GPL3 will be all that widely adopted, despite scare tactics used to try and get more people behind it.

[WJeansonne]

Yeah right! They fear the rath of MS is more like it!!

They know better than to stir the waking giant by foiling its opportunities to leverage linux. That's the reality of the situation.

[MSSlayer]

Yeah

They fear a company that has no innovative ideas and the only way it has left to try and defend its ill gotten gains is to make accusations without offering proof.

Yeah, F/OSS is afraid of a bully that has its pants around its ankles.

[WJeansonne]

Socialist Software Policy at its Best

How on earth these individuals were ever able to socialize software and circumvent intellectual property right laws here in the U.S. of all places is abominable. I can see how the socialists in Europe would let this crap persist, but as Coolidge once said "the business of America is business".

[MSSlayer]

wow

Stupidity know no bounds at MS I see.

Yeah, whatever is good for business rules eh? Even though MS has been nothing but a destructive force in the IT world.

[t8]

Ignorance knows no bounds

Destroy Open Source and let Microsoft dominate the software industry.

If you lived in the 1500s-1600s I wonder if you would have condemned Copernicus and Galileo for their alternative views?