Why Upgrade to GPL Version 3, Jun 04, 2007

Version 3 of the GNU General Public License will soon be finished, enabling free software packages to upgrade from GPL version 2. This article explains why upgrading the license is important.

We developed the GNU operating system so that we could control our own computers, and use them in freedom. To seek popularity for our software by ceding this freedom would defeat that purpose. Therefore we have designed Version 3 of the GNU GPL to uphold the user's freedom to modify the source code and put modified versions to real use.

Because Microsoft has so much market power, it can often impose new standards at will. It need only patent some minor idea, design a file format, programming language, or communication protocol based on it, and then pressure users to adopt it. Then we in the free software community will be forbidden to provide software that does what these users want; they will be locked in to Microsoft, and we will be locked out from serving them.

We can honestly thank IBM for agreeing not to sue us with 500 of its patents, and we can thank Nokia too for agreeing not to attack one of our community's projects. But don't be distracted from the real issue at stake. Nokia most likely intends to use this announcement as a way to put us in more danger.

For the first time in my life, I want to thank Larry McVoy. He recently eliminated a major weakness of the free software community, by announcing the end of his campaign to entice free software projects to use and promote his non-free software.

Mr. Gates' secret is out now--he too was a "communist;" he, too, recognized that software patents were harmful--until Microsoft became one of these giants.

Outside Solaris, few or no free software packages use that license [the CDDL] --and Sun has not said it won't sue us for implementing the same techniques in our own free software.

It has become fashionable to describe copyright, patents, and trademarks as "intellectual property." This fashion did not arise by accident -- the term systematically distorts and confuses these issues. Anyone wishing to think clearly about any of these laws would do well to resist it.

Software patents are the software project equivalent of land mines: Each design decision carries a risk of stepping on a patent, which can destroy your project.

Developing a large and complex program means combining many ideas, often hundreds or thousands of them. In a country that allows software patents, chances are that some substantial fraction of the ideas in your program will be patented already by various companies. Perhaps hundreds of patents will cover parts of your program. A study in 2004 found almost 300 U.S. patents that covered various parts of a single important program. It is so much work to do such a study that only one has been done.

If your program is free software, it is basically ethical--but there is a trap you must be on guard for. Your program, though in itself free, may be restricted by non-free software that it depends on. Since the problem is most prominent today for Java programs, we call it the Java Trap.

School should teach students ways of life that will benefit society as a whole. They should promote the use of free software just as they promote recycling. If schools teach students free software, then the students will use free software after they graduate. This will help society as a whole escape from being dominated (and gouged) by megacorporations. Those corporations offer free samples to schools for the same reason tobacco companies distribute free cigarettes: to get children addicted (1). They will not give discounts to these students once they grow up and graduate.