The first draft of the open-source GNU General Public
License (GPL) Version 3 will be unveiled this week, at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.
The draft’s release will kick-start many months of debate over
the content and exact wording of the licence, which should govern
the use of the majority of open-source software for years to
come.
This is the first time in 15 years that the GPL, which among
other things covers the Linux operating system kernel, has been
updated. The aim is to bring the licence up-to-date to reflect the
current IT environment.
It is believed the first draft of the new licence will include
new types of patent protection, issues around intellectual property
licensing and will deal with areas like software used over a
network.
The authors of the first draft are Richard Stallman, the
licence’s original author, and Eben Moglen, general counsel for the
Free Software Foundation.
Both authors will address delegates at the MIT GPL event.