Slashdot has links to two transcripts of discussions by FOSS bosses Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen of the draft version 3 of the GPL (Transcript of Opening session of first international GPLv3 conference, January 16th 2006 & Transcript of a talk by Richard Stallman about GPLv3, February 25th 2006.)

Excerpts confirm Tony Healy's analysis (GPLv3 and Web Businesses: Is the Free Software Foundation Getting Tricky?) of the potential impact of the proposals on web services companies (ASPs) that rely on Linux, such as Google, eBay, and Amazon. [Warning: non-GPL nerds turn around now.]

Stallman: Feb. 25:

[Section: Licence compatibility]

Another big change - comparatively big - is that we've decided to make the GPL compatible with some additional free software licences that are incompatible with GPL version two. . . . We decided to list a specific set of additional requires that are ok. So other licences can add requirements of those kinds.

. . . .

One of them is the Affero GPL requirement that says "if you run this for public access, you must provide a command to download the sources". So the Affero GPL is the same as the GNU GPL version two but it has one additional condition which says if you put any version of this program on a public web server, you've got to have a command that the user can use to download the source of your version. So we were thinking of putting a requirement like that into the GPL version three, together with a way that people could explicitly activate it, but then I decided that it would be much simpler just to let this be a compatible licence and put this compatible licence on files that they're programming. So GPLv3 will not make this requirement, but it will be compatible with licences that have this requirement.

[JVD Note: The relevant provision of the Affero license is section 2(d):

If the Program as you received it is intended to interact with users through a computer network and if, in the version you received, any user interacting with the Program was given the opportunity to request transmission to that user of the Program's complete source code, you must not remove that facility from your modified version of the Program or work based on the Program, and must offer an equivalent opportunity for all users interacting with your Program through a computer network to request immediate transmission by HTTP of the complete source code of your modified version or other derivative work. [Emphsis added.]

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

This license is not on the list of open source licenses maintained by the Open Source Initiative,however. ]

Moglen, Jan. 16, 2006

GPLv3 represented by our discussion draft, would permit sub-parts added to GPL'd works to bear requirements beyond the requirements of the GPL in certain narrow areas. . . . . The requirements added to additional parts of the work may require

"that the work contain functioning facilities that allow users to immediately obtain copies of its Complete Corresponding Source Code."

This is a generalisation of an experiment that we tried in the Affero GPL.

It is the only step that we take, in this license, towards dealing with the question of modified versions of software performing remote services. Our position is that if you develop code under GPL, that performs remote services, you may include in your code, a facility that allows the client side receiving such services to request immediate transmission of the server-side code.

You can require, in your terms, that that facility not be removed. We have not added such a term to GPL, we do not plan to add such a term to GPL. We merely say that the GPL will be compatible with the imposition of those terms by so many developers as wish to do so, and therefore those who wish to develop such code, and protect against others offering similar remote services on the basis of modified versions may do so. GPL does not enforce such a restriction, nor does it prohibit mixture of code bearing such a restriction, and we believe that balance is appropriate given the division of opinion in the community and the diversity of models of use of our code, commercial and non-commercial, at this time.

posted by James DeLong @ 9:05 AM | Software

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