"GPL Version 3: Posing A Threat To Interoperability, Open Innovation, And Customer Choice" is in Metropolitan Corporate Counsel (April 2007). The conclusion:

The latest GPLv3 draft is living in the past. The modern IT industry and customer realities are predicated on a healthy coexistence of the OSS and proprietary software models and collaborations between each camp in response to customer demands for increased interoperability. It is ironic that the Free Software Foundation, which prides itself on promoting “openness” in software development, distribution, and use is now seeking

– with GPLv3 – to reverse the current marketplace paradigm of “Open Innovation" and to force a return to closed systems and divisiveness between OSS and proprietary software. Fortunately, many parties have spoken out against the GPLv3, including prominent OSS supporters such as Linus Torvalds, the developer of the Linux kernel.17 Hopefully, the members of the committee overseeing the GPLv3 revision process will come to appreciate these concerns and abandon this approach before the final version of GPLv3 is released and adopted, so that the healthy, pro-consumer, pro innovation collaborations that are occurring between OSS and proprietary software will continue to take hold and drive even greater interoperability.

posted by James DeLong @ 11:59 AM | Software

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