[glug-t] About GPLv3

http://www.gcn.com/print/26_18/44699-1.html
GNU version of GPL gives feds a break
Agencies can let contractors use software without making it public

By William Jackson

The latest version of the General Public License, released last month by the
Free Software Foundation (FSF), has something to please or displease just
about everyone. But agencies and their contractors should be happy with an
exception carved out for them that will make it easier to keep sensitive
federal software code under wraps.

The foundation released GPL Version 3 late last month, updating for the
first time in 16 years the license under which some of the most widely used
open-source and free software programs are distributed.

 *In harmony*
The new version brings GPL into closer alignment with some other free or
open-source licenses and moves to restrict cooperative patent agreements,
such as the one announced in November by Microsoft and Novell.

"It is extremely significant," said Doug Levin, president at Black Duck
Software, which develops software license management programs. He called the
new GPL an extraordinary achievement and described the 18-month
collaborative process to produce it as unprecedented. Levin estimated that
as much as 70 percent of open-source software is distributed under GPL, the
best known of which probably is Linux or, as the Free Software Foundation
calls it, GNU/Linux.

 The GNU â?? which stands for GNU's Not Unix â?? operating system on which Linux
is based was developed by FSF.

Although free and open-source software often are lumped together, FSF
founder Richard Stallman draws a sharp distinction between the two.

Open-source is a process for designing software that enables collaboration
among multiple contributors, and free software is an ethical commitment to
produce software without restrictions on its use or distribution.

Anyone is free to use, modify and even sell free software, but those same
rights must be passed on to any other users of the modified software.

That requirement is at the heart of GPL, which ensures that all rights to a
piece of software are conveyed with that software anytime it is distributed.
The first version of GPL was released in 1989, and Version 2 was released
two years later. Stallman began working on the present version in 2005, and
it has undergone an 18-month process of public review and feedback.

 The government's traditional reluctance to adopt open-source or free
software is beginning to change, Levin said.

"The government is slow to change, but they are increasingly adopting
open-source and other third-party components" in their software programs, he
said.

This adds another layer of complexity to the chore of managing software
licenses, which is where Black Duck earns its bread and butter. It has a
contract with the Navy and a number of government contractors.

The contractor issue has caused problems with government use of software
under GPL, Levin said. Under Version 2 of the license, changes made in the
software became public once the software was distributed, and giving the
software to a contractor to run counted as a distribution.

 *There's the rub *
That restricted the use of software including code from government
developers that the government wanted to keep proprietary for security
reasons.

Version 3 of the license includes an exception for contractors: Use of
software by a contractor does not constitute distribution and does not
trigger the obligation to make modifications public.

"That has been a major impact in the GPL and is a reason why government and
contractors should adopt GPLv3 types of code," Levin said.

Restrictions in the license on reciprocal patent agreements under which
companies provide one another's customers with patent protection are
receiving much more attention.

FSF does not like software patents and uses terms such as scourge to
describe the restrictions patents bring to development, use and distribution
of software.

The new license has a grandfather clause and does not interfere with the
agreement in which Microsoft offers Novell customers protection from patent
infringement claims against SUSE Linux Enterprise software. But when
software under the GPLv3 license is involved, the same patent protection
must be extended to all customers.

Patent issues are addressed in Section 11 of the license, which says that if
you "grant a patent license to some of the parties receiving the covered
workâ?¦then the patent license you grant is automatically extended to all
recipients." The next paragraph forbids future agreements of that kind.

"The main reason for this is tactical," the foundation said in a statement.
"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." However,
the new version "will block Microsoft and other patent aggressors from
further such attempts to subvert parts of our community."

 *Other voices*
Not everyone is pleased with GPLv3. Some complain that the free-software
movement is imposing its ethics on developers. FSF representatives rail
against what they call "Tivolization," a reference to the digital video
recorder that runs Linux but will not allow modified versions of the
operating system to run on its boxes in the name of digital rights
management.

Because of such limitations, FSF refers to DRM as digital restrictions
management and turns Trusted Computing into Treacherous Computing.

Such philosophical and practical differences have generated debate about
whether the Linux kernel should be distributed under GPLv3. Red Hat, a
commercial distributor of Linux, has welcomed the new license, saying the
company "believes our end user customers will benefit from several of the
new provisions in GPLv3, including the patent license provisions."

The company said it will add GPLv3 to the list of approved licenses for
which it will honor its promise not to enforce its software patents.

However, in a digital version of the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured
destruction, Red Hat's "defense is to develop a corresponding portfolio of
software patents for defensive purposes," the company said.



-- 
Aditya

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