GNU Free Software License Gets Upgrade to Meet Modern Demands
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For the first time in almost 16 years, the most widely adopted set of rules governing free software has been rewritten and updated to meet the demands of the 21st century.
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Ziff Davis - Analysts say a new standard version of Linux should go a long way to raise the platform's chances in the enterprise by improving open-source software's interoperability.
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Gone are the days when free software could blithely ignore what was happening in the world of proprietary code.  The two approaches are now inextricably intertwined as more and more users and companies choose to run both.  One paradoxical consequence of this is that as free software becomes more widely deployed, Microsoft's impact on it becomes greater.  Against this background, a recent shift in Microsoft's public statements about open source assumes a particular importance.
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Ziff Davis - The Free Standards Group's updated standard will improve Linux code portability and interoperability, developers say, and reduce the worry of platform fragmentation.
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(InfoWorld) - A controversial update to the GNU GPL (General Public License) is set to be released Friday by the Free Software Foundation, a representative of the organization said on Tuesday. GPL version 3 is arriving 16 years after version 2 of the license for open-source software. Questions remain, however, about who exactly will adopt it. Among improvements is a copyright technology not found anywhere in the world with the goal of providing uniformity in different jurisdictions, said Brett Smith, licensing compliance engineer for the foundation. "There's a lot of copyright laws that talk about distribution, but they don't mean the same thing," in different places, he said. "Now, GPL talks about propagation and conveying," Smith said. With this new provision, the terms are the same everywhere worldwide, he said. Version 3 also works to ensure that users can modify software installed on personal computers or in household devices. If software is conveyed inside a device, users must be given enough information so they can modify the software in the device, Smith said. An explicit patent provision in GPL 3 means people who contribute to free software cannot sue users for patent infringement, Smith said. This was not clear in the GPL previously. "This will make sure it's very clear and works across the board," he said. Microsoft and Novell recently forged an agreement not to sue each other's customers over patent issues. The foundation in version 3 provides what has been described as "patent-insurance" in response to the Microsoft-Novell arrangement. GPL 3 also spells out requirements for license compatibility. In May, the Foundation expressed intentions to iron out incompatibilities with other open-source licenses such as the Apache license. With this provision, users can copy Apache-licensed code into GPL projects, said analyst Stephen O'Grady of RedMonk. "For a variety of folks, that's a big deal," O'Grady said. Whether to actually migrate to GPL 3 is a developer decision, Smith said. At Digium, which produces the Asterisk open-source telephony platform, no decision has been made yet, said Mark Spencer, chairman and CTO of Digium. "There are some complications around the patent terms that place some additional requirements upon the developers and distributors that we need to fully understand in more detail," Spencer said. Patent provisions add uncertainty about being able to distribute software covered by someone else's patent, he said. But GPL 3 has its merits, he noted. "GPL version 3 does clean up a lot of things about the GPL that were sort of implicit in previous and become much more explicit here," such as how the GPL interacts with other licenses, Spencer said. Sun has expressed the possibility of offering its Solaris OS under the GPL 3. The Linux kernel has been offered under the GPL previously. Novell, Microsoft, and the Linux Foundation deferred comment on Tuesday until the actual release of the license. The FSF has published an essay by FSF President Richard Stallman in which he argues for the benefits of GPL version 3. âThe reason to migrate is because of the existing problems which GPLv3 will fix, such as 'tivoization,' DRM, and threats from software patents. Further advantages of GPLv3 include better internationalization, gentler termination, support for BitTorrent, and compatibility with the Apache license," Stallman said in a statement released by the foundation in May. Tivoization, which refers to Tivo's software, is when computer appliances feature GPL-covered code that cannot be changed because the appliance will shut down. Actual impacts of GPL version 3 could take a year or more to gauge, said Doug Levin, CEO of Black Duck Software, which offers a software compliance management platform. "Right now, it appears there will only be a small number of projects that will adopt the license," but that could change, Levin said.
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The fourth and final draft of version 3 the Gnu Public License is released by the Free Software Foundation. The GPLv3 addresses issues central to the debate over patent protection and undermines further patent-protection agreements.
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Looking to avoid the costly fragmentation that stifled the Unix market, members of the Free Standards Group have announced a new version of a critical Linux standard that many of its proponents hope will cement the future for the open-source operating
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&quot;We believe the current license is generally incompatible with open source, contrary to the practice of open Internet standards, and specifically incompatible with the Apache License 2.0.
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In an effort to help ensure standardization, the Free Standards Group has officially released the Linux Standard Base (LSB) 2.0, a specification composed of interoperability standards, a base set of APIs and libraries and developer environments and test
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New PostScript RIP gives designers more options in output formats.
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Following the release Tuesday of a new interoperable version of Linux, analysts said the standard should go along way towards preventing a serious roadblock to widespread acceptance of Linux
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Hewlett-Packard has launched the FOSSology Project, a tool for tracking and monitoring the use of free and open-source software within an IT environment.The project stems from governance work done in-house at HP, according to the Web site set up for the project.&quot;We needed a tool that would quickly and accurately describe how a given open-source project was licensed,&quot; a statement on the site reads. &quot;Rather than simply collecting a project&#39;s advertised license (as given at their website or in their documentation), this tool needed to analyze all of the source code for a given project and intelligently report all of the licenses being used based on the license declarations and tell-tale phrases that identify software licensing.&quot;FOSSology is available under the terms of the GPL (GNU General Public License) version 2 and currently has support on most GNU/Linux platforms, according to the site.It is not clear from the site how HP plans to make money through the initiative. A company spokeswoman declined comment and said Friday that more details will be announced next week.Companies like Black Duck Software are already in the FOSS-tracking business.HP&#39;s entry brought a warm welcome from Black Duck CEO Doug Levin. Levin may feel HP&#39;s involvement will help the market expand overall. &quot;We can now officially welcome HP to our market,&quot; Levin wrote on his blog . &quot;FOSSology is a nice tool for developers. It will result in software developers being better informed about their use of GPL. That makes it a very worthy tool.&quot;Right now, the FOSSology project has modules for license analysis, MIME type identification and for extracting metadata, according to the site.The site said the tool already generates detailed results: &quot;More than simply reporting, &#39;Package X uses license Y,&#39; the FOSSology tool attempts to analyze every file within the package to determine its license. The license report is thus an aggregate of all of the different licenses found to be in use by a package.&quot;FOSSology&#39;s analyses aren&#39;t foolproof, however, a statement on the site concedes: &quot;In general, the analysis results are very good guesses but should not be considered authoritative. (Or to say it simply: We&#39;re not lawyers. The code tries its best, but leave the legal decisions up to your own attorneys.)&quot;Over time, FOSSology is meant to be far more than an open-source license tracker, according to the site. Future capabilities could address bug fixes and patches, security alerts, and code reuse, as well as analysis of all types of software.The effort prompted praise on Friday from Michael Cote, an analyst with Redmonk. &quot;It&#39;s free and open source, which is nice,&quot; Cote said. &quot;So if the data is reliable and well-fed, it could be of help for people who don&#39;t want to work with Black Duck ... and others who have commercial ways to scan for open-source licenses.&quot;&quot;The interesting thing will be to see how open the resulting data is and how much reporting people do with it,&quot; he added. &quot;There&#39;s a sort of cloudy idea of how much open source is used in the enterprise, and having more accurate, free numbers would be great for the community, and more importantly, enterprises that want to get a feel for how widely used open source software is.&quot;The availability of free open-source usage data &quot;will help people make much better -- and affordable -- decisions about what open source to use and not use,&quot; Cote said.
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A Sun Microsystems engineer chartered with directing the engineering effort to open source Solaris has published a new software license that could be used for the open-source release of Sun's Unix operating system. Though Sun is vague on details about the license, called the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), it is incompatible with Linux's software license.
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The Free Standards Group and the Open Source Development Labs(OSDL) hope that improved standards for Linux will help accelerate its adoption by enterprise and large business customers.
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Users of the Linux operating system will get patent protection and access to updated Windows Media technology.
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The Internet video appliance maker which uses Linux says it will make its source code available to comply with GPL.
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The Free Standards Group (FSG) has announced the release of a specification that aims to help keep the Linux operating system from fragmenting and allow applications developed for one version of Linux to work on one another.