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Discussion Draft Views

This page is the designated catch-all for random questions -- and there's no place that I can easily find for general questions and comments about the process, rather than about the draft.

I think it would be very helpful to the users not only to have a discussion draft online, and a comment-annotated draft, both of which are there, but perhaps a diff-style view between GPLv2 and the current draft of GPLv3. This would allow people to easily browse and see what the differences are.

The rationale document serves much of this purpose. It explains what changes have been made, and why they have been put in place. An unofficial, more traditional diff is also available. --brett 14:25, 17 January 2006 (EST)

Newly compatible licences

There should be a list of licences that will be compatible with the GPLv3 (as of the currrent draft) that were not compatible with the GPLv2. As this is a MAJOR change to the GPL, an enumeration of these licences would be very helpful. It would also allow us to find cases were a licence tat was almost certainly intended to become compatible actually did not, and give the FSF an oppertunity to correct this. 71.0.196.29 15:46, 19 January 2006 (EST)


Agreed, anyone should feel free to create this section. They could start with the information that Eben gave in his presentation at the opening of the conference. I'll get to making the section in the next couple of days if nobody else does, but anyone with the time should go ahead and do it now. We had planned on having a compatibility list here from the beginning but didn't make a placeholder for it. User:johns

An initial list is already available on Howto#Which licenses are compatible with GPLv3. If this is problematic, we can consider moving it. --brett 17:43, 19 January 2006 (EST)

Server side applications

New server side applications with a remote, mostly web interface are now appearing day after day and their number is bound to grow steadily over time. However, GPLv3 seems to neglect this. The only related clause is 7d) and it looks like added only to make GPLv3 compatible with the Affero GPL.

Worse still, a requirement to "contain functioning factilities" to allow users to get source might be impossible to meet (for example in general purpose libraries or embedded devices' hardware) - so it'd make some formally GPLv3 compatible software unusable to other GPLv3 projects.

To make things even worse, since general purpose libraries cannot include such an Affero-like clause for the above reasons, they may be used *without limitation* in defacto proprietary software that runs on the server side (yes, it's GPL, but since you're not receiving any object code, you have no right to request the source.)

I think it should be solved by extending the rights given by the GPL to all users of the free software, not only to those people that happen to get some executable - and this should be the main change from GPLv2 to v3.

Thank you for your suggestions. I encourage you to please submit them to the comment system, where they can be reviewed by discussion committees and handled appropriately. --brett 10:35, 29 January 2006 (EST)

In fact, section 2 seems to almost explicitly allow such "defacto proprietary" software with "Propagation of covered works is permitted without limitation provided it does not enable parties other than you to make or receive copies." unless their specific license contains an Affero-like clause. --jsz 21:45, 22 February 2006 (CET)

I agree with this section -- attention must be paid to this issue, and it will only continue to grow in importance with time. It's good that the gplv3 provides support for developers to add their own Affero-like clauses.

However, I think it would be even better if the FSF were to produce a standard-GPL-with-Affero-style-clause that prohibited deploying a server running the licensed software without also making the source available. Even if all that was done was rename the Affero license to "Server-Side GPL", it would provide a common reference point, and prevent an inevitable soup of subtly-differing clauses all attempting to do the same thing. It would be awful if there was a profusion of open source web applications, each of which ostensibly was gplv3 but also had its own clauses that needed to be examined individually. The FSF needs to provide leadership on how to keep software free in a world of server-side applications. --breath 19:32, 28 February 2006 (EST)

Test Cases

I just added the link to Test_Cases back to the front page. Brett removed it earlier, and I added comments to the talk page explaining why I think it should be kept. I put the link back on this page in order to ping the people in charge, so we can talk about it.

--stefie10 11:43, 30 January 2006 (EST)

A place for external links? (updated)

Hi, ciaran o'riordan here. I've made:

Should this wiki have a place for collecting links to such documents - which are about GPLv3 promotion and explanation, not about the GPLv3 itself - or is there a "no external links" policy or what? Thanks to anyone who can clear this up. ciaran 15:17, 10 February 2006 (EST)

Ok, I've made a page for these: Reusable texts. Comments? ciaran 11:02, 13 February 2006 (EST)

That's good, Ciaran. I may want to transfer some of these links away from the wiki to the gplv3.fsf.org/av section, if that's alright with you. I'm thinking in particular the transcript. What do you think? --johns 16:58, 24 February 2006 (EST)