Today is the official release of the GPLv3 license by the Free Software Foundation. This is a major event within the software community yet at the same time there are many who do not understand the purpose, point and meaning of the GPL so it’s time for a refresher course.
From the GPLv3 Press collection you can read about the purpose and meaning of free software, the relationship between GNU and Linux and the important difference between free software and “open source”.
On 1 April 2007 Richard Stallman gave a speech on the GPLv3 in Brussels you can listen to it here in Ogg/Vorbis. In the summer of 2006 Eben Moglen gave a talk in Barcelona discussing the wording of the changes in version 3 (listen in Ogg/Vorbis).
Personal Notes has collected great links about the GPLv3
So to begin withâ?¦Why would someone need or want to upgrade from the GPLv2 to the GPLv3? Let the person who started it all to explain why
Here there’s a really nice and clear A&Q ‘session’ on GPLv3 wrote by Luis Villa and divided in 3 blog entries (probably more to come):
- GPL v3, the Q&A: part 1- the license
- GPL v3, the Q&A: part 2- developers
- GPL v3, the Q&A: part 3- companies
Groklaw, as usual, is an incredible source of interesting material:
