GPLv3 dividing the community (InformationWeek)

Charlie Babcock’s GPLv3 story hit this morning. It’s an interesting and thoughtful read, and goes to the heart of one of the big disagreements in open source: how far can a license go in seeking to ensure freedom?

There’s a rift developing between camps within the free software movement over the next version of the most popular open source license, known as the General Public License, or GPL. And while that infighting might appear to be little more than a family squabble, its ramifications could be significant for how companies use open source software in the future.

A new version of the GPL, the third overall and the first revision since 1991, was supposed to be released this month. But controversy over several new provisions–and the authors’ ambitions to thwart Microsoft’s Linux pact with Novell–have delayed it until later this year.

Unless there’s a radical reworking of GPL version 3 (GPLv3, in the programmer lexicon), a significant portion of the open source community will reject it, chief among them Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux.

I actually quite like GPLv3, and don’t spent much time wringing my hands over it. I think a fair amount of concern that is wasted on it is just that: wasted. The GPLv3 is not the bogeyman some want to make of it (any more than GPLv2 was a bogeyman, though its introduction over a decade ago brought out the same angst that v3 has done).

What does concern me, though, is the Free Software Foundation’s apparent attempts to thwart all future circumventions of the GPL.

Another aspect of GPLv3 that makes business users uneasy is the writers’ ambition to eliminate all threats from software patents. GPLv3 had been through two drafts when news of the Microsoft-Novell deal broke late last year. In an address shortly afterward to the 5th International GPLv3 Conference in Tokyo, Stallman called the deal “cunning” because the two vendors had found a way to skirt GPLv2’s provision against patent litigation. “We’re going to make sure that when GPL version 3 really comes out, it will block such deals,” Stallman told the conference.

I support the intention – I’ve been a voiciferous opponent of the Microsoft/Novell patent deal – but I think that any attempt to micromanage others’ bad intentions is fraught with peril and, ultimately, disappointment. The US Constitution has endured for so long (as has GPLv2) because it is grounded in basic principles. Current US legislation (like the dreaded Alternative Minimum Tax) often founders for precisely the opposite reason: it tries to fix a specific problem with specific language which only encourages specific n’er-do-wells to find specific ways to get around the new rules.

I believe GPLv3 is an important improvement over GPLv3 in several ways (I like its closure of the ASP loophole, for one thing, and don’t buy the article’s suggestion that enterprises may run afoul of it – they may, but almost certainly wouldn’t, just as they don’t with GPLv2). But I do hope the drafters will recognize that the undermining attempts of the few should not prescribe the general principles for the many. Most users of the GPL happily abide by its terms. Don’t let Microsoft and Novell dilute GPLv3’s more general purposes.