The 3rd discussion draft of the GNU General Public License version 3, which have been worked on for a while, have been published on Free Software Foundation web site. As I expressed before, I don’t think that a license text can solve all the problems related to the freedom of software. Neither I think is necessary to modify the GPL v2, which only recently have begun to be endorsed within the business circles. I think FSF (of which I am an associate member) is acting in a highly ideological manner, which may lead to some very disastrous forking of GPL licenses…

I should change the verbs in the above statements with past perfect. The latest draft is a much more relaxing and soothing (a la GPL v2) text. In stark contrast to the infamous EULA’s protection for the owner and for some cases for the developer of proprietary software, GPL puts the user at the front stage and enforces the freedom of the user. This approach, as I’ve just said, has been approved as a very meaningful distribution and sharing model, not only in the software and IT context, but for the business world as well. The former drafts of GPL v3 have tried to extend this mission to protect and oversee the freedom of society and third parties as well. The clauses against Tivo-ization and DRM have been redefining the borders of the freedom. The present draft has a much softer wording, emphasizing the freedom of the user, again.

The anti-patent approach and the clauses referring to the infamous Microsoft-Novell pact are also new. In fact these were the reason for the draft’s missed deadline. I think these are somewhat unnecessary references to the current headlines, still the text in the present draft is acceptable. These clauses cover the developer and consequently guards and immunizes the user against the possible patent scams.

Among others, Linus Torvalds is pretty pleased with the present draft of GPL v3. Way to go…