Debate Looms for GPL 3 Draft

The first draft of GNU General Public License Version 3 will be unveiled next week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., but that milestone is likely to be more of a beginning than an ending. The release of the draft will kick off months of debate over the content and exact wording of the license that will govern much open-source software for the foreseeable future.

This is the first time in 15 years that the GPL, which governs many open-source projects, including the Linux kernel, has been updated to reflect the current IT environment. Sources said that the first draft will contain some type of patent protection and address the issues of intellectual property licensing, trusted computing and how to deal with software used over a network. The authors of the first draft, Richard Stallman, the license's original author, and Eben Moglen, the general counsel for the Free Software Foundation—both of whom will address attendees at the GPL event—would not confirm details of the draft, but it is expected to be fairly technical and complex in nature.