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Why does the GPL v2 licence need updating? |
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"GPL version two was developed in 1991. The community was very different then. It was much smaller. There were probably hundreds of Free Software packages instead of tens of thousands. And there was no free operating system."
"As a result, the amount of pressure that people who were effectively our adversaries and wanted to cheat were placing on us and placing on our licences was much less. Since that time, Free Software has become far more popular with tens of millions of users.
There are two basically free operating systems: GNU/Linux and BSD. Unfortunately, nearly all the versions that people use include non-Free Software, but basically they are free systems.
And there are now many companies that are looking for loopholes, trying to defeat the goal of the GNU GPL which is to ensure all users freedom. The reason I wrote the GNU GPL was to make sure that when I release a program as Free Software, all of you get the four freedoms.
So the point is, I wont be satisfied if only the users who get the program from me have freedom. I want to make sure that no matter how the program reaches you, whether it has been changed or not, all of you get freedom. The basic idea of the GNU GPL is to establish the four freedoms as inalienable rights, that is, rights that nobody can lose, except through wrong doing. You can't sell them. We're not going to have any selling yourself into slavery in our community of freedom."
Read on at the FSF Europe website for a full transcript of this Richard Stallman speech at the 5th international GPLv3 conference held on the 21st November 2006.
Topics / sections:
- Why does the licence need updating?
- About versions 1 and 2
- Internationalisation
- Licence compatibility
- Preventing tivoisation
- Tivoisation and Treacherous Computing
- General comments on Treacherous Computing
- Software patents
- The Novell and Microsoft example
- Internet distribution instead of mail order
- Licence termination
- Narrow patent retaliation
- Undermining the DMCA and EUCD
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