Chapter 18. GPL Version 3.0
What is the Effect of the Release of GPL3?
Version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPL3) was released on June 29, 2007. Because this version was released shortly before this book went to press, what follows is a brief description of the changes in version 3. Industry reaction to the release of this version, its rate of adoption, and the interpretation of its key provisions have yet to be seen, and may be uncertain for some time. GPL3 today is like a news story: easier to describe than to analyze in context. Only with time will the kind of analysis that has been applied to GPL version 2 (GPL2) emerge. This chapter answers the most frequent questions about GPL3, mindful that many interpretive and practical questions currently remain unanswered.
GPL2 was released in 1991. At the time of its release, free software was relatively unknown, except to the immediate free software community. Between 1991 and 2007, the technology industry slowly grew to accept GPL2, driven mostly by the popularity of the Linux operating system. However, that acceptance was hard fought. The corporate world perceived the license as difficult to understand, vague, and therefore risky to use. However, over the years, corporate users grew comfortable, primarily because of the development of industry practice that helped provide an interpretation of the license. Also, the Free Software Foundation (FSF)published extensive explanatory material about the license in the form of frequently ...
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