A third discussion draft of the GPLv3 was released yesterday. The draft will be open for comment for a period of not less than two months; then a "last call draft" will be published and be open for 30 days. Assuming everything is in place, the licence will come into effect shortly thereafter.
One can gauge the extent to which the Microsoft-Novell deal has affected the free and open source software space when the delay is in the main attributed to that very deal.
In an explanatory note issued a day before the release of the third discussion draft, the Free Software Foundation said: "The basic harm that such an agreement (the Novell deal) can do is to make the free software subject to it effectively proprietary. This result occurs to the extent that users feel compelled, by the threat of the patent, to get their copies in this way."
This is in reference to the portion of the agreement between Microsoft and Novell which specifies that neither company would sue the other's customers for patent violations.
"We take the threat seriously, and we have decided to act to block such threats, and to reduce their potential to do harm," the note said.
In the new draft, section 11 specifically deals with this problem and does not allow deals of this nature to be struck, deals that ensure that the distribution sold by one company is exempt from patent claims.
To quote from the draft, it "...deals with the most acute danger posed by discrimination among customers, by ensuring that any party who distributes others’ GPL-covered programs, and makes promises of patent safety limited to some but not all recipients of copies of those speciï¬c programs, automatically extends its promises of patent safety to cover all recipients of all copies of the covered works."
And to prevent such things happening in the future, the draft says that any entity, which is already part of a deal which provides patent cover in the manner that the Novell deal does, cannot distribute software that is under the GPLv3. There is a cutoff date of March 28 for this provision.
While the Novell deal will come within the deadline, the draft notes that the earlier provision - the extension of the promise of patent safety - will effectively neuter the deal.
"We believe it is sufficient to ensure either the deal’s voluntary modiï¬cation by Microsoft or its reduction to comparative harmlessness. Novell expected to gain commercial advantage from its patent deal with Microsoft; the effects of the fourth paragraph in undoing the harm of that deal will necessarily be visited upon Novell."
While Linux creator Linus Torvalds has not been a fan of the GPLv3, categorically stating that the kernel would remain under GPLv2 as it is now, he has welcomed the third draft as an improvement on earlier versions.
Torvalds had expressed concerns about the way GPLv3 addressed digital rights management and also the possibiltiy of the existence of multiple incompatible versions of the licence; these have now been toned down, he told CNET.
He also left open the possibility that the kernel would ultimately come under the new licence, something which would be very welcome for the FSF and the entire FOSS community.
