Policy Department C: Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs
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8
Proprietary software developers use copyright to take away the users' freedom; the GNU
Project uses copyright to guarantee their freedom. That's why the name is reversed,
changing “copyright” into “copyleft”.
Copyleft is a general concept; there are many ways to fill in the details. In the GNU Project,
the specific distribution terms that are used are contained in the GNU General Public
License, the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and the GNU Free Documentation
License (FDL).
The appropriate license is included in many manuals and in each GNU source code
distribution.
The GNU GPL is designed so that it can easily be applied to any program by the copyright
holder. The copyright holder doesn't have to modify the GNU GPL to do this, but just to add
notices to the program which refer properly to the GNU GPL. However, if someone wishes
to use the GPL, he/she must use its entire text: the GPL is an integral whole, and partial
copies are not permitted. The same applies to the LGPL, Affero GPL, and FDL.
Using the same distribution terms for many different programs makes it easy to copy code
between various different programs. Since they all have the same distribution terms, there
is no need to think about whether the terms are compatible. The Lesser GPL includes a
provision that allows altering the distribution terms to the ordinary GPL, so that one can
copy code into another program covered by the GPL.
2 CREATING VERSION THREE OF THE GNU GENERAL
PUBLIC LICENSE (GPLV3)
On January 16th, 2006 the GPL version 3 revision process began with a conference at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With approximately 350 participants, including 87
invited delegates serving on one of four discussion committees, this conference served as
the public introduction to what would become a nearly 19 month consultation process
designed to include every stake holder in one of the most widely used software licenses in
the world.
2.1
The GPLv2
In January 2006, GPL version 2 was one of the most widely used software licenses in the
world, a legal document tying together individuals, groups, governments, and private
institutions on every continent. When GPLv2, the first version to achieve widespread
adoption, was originally released in June 1991, Free Software was a small movement
geographically centered around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the nearly 15
years since that event, Free Software had grown by orders of magnitude, taking its place
as a pillar of both business and non-commercial computer usage. The changing software
landscape posed challenges for the 15 year old license. In the intervening years, software
patents had become a reality in the United States, DRM technologies
12
and anti-
circumvention laws were creating new restrictions on computer users’ freedoms, software
licensed under the GPL had spread to a multitude of different legal jurisdictions, and new
Free Software licenses had been written with provisions that made them technically
incompatible with the GPL even where the communities using both licenses wished to
cooperate. Change was needed to address these issues but rewriting the license by itself
would have little effect. The GPL itself is not a law and all participants in the community
join voluntarily. Changing the legal norms of that community would require a large process
of outreach, discussion, and listening to ensure that the final terms of the new license
would be not just acceptable but attractive to all members. After six months of planning,
the Free Software Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center launched the GPLv3
revision campaign to do just that.
12 “Digital Restrictions Management” or “Digital Rights Management” tools, known more commonly as “DRM,” are
access control technologies that seek to dictate what an individual may do with digital content.
Workshop: Legal aspects of free and open source software
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9
2.2
The Process Definition
From the beginning the GPLv3 revision process was designed to be inclusive and
transparent. As such, it began with the release of a Process Definition document
13
outlining
the structure of the revision process. This listed how many drafts were planned, the
estimated time frame for their release, what information would be released about the
reasoning behind any changes to the license at each stage, how to participate in the
process, how that participation would be incorporated in writing new versions, and FSF’s
guiding principles in revising the license. While the final version of this 22 page document
was released on January 15, 2006, just before the first international conference, early
versions had been available to the public for six weeks prior to that date. Even in defining
the process FSF wished to listen to the community. The final process definition outlined
three main avenues for public participation: commenting on the public website, attending
one of the international conferences, or participating on one of four discussion committees.
3
THE PUBLIC CONSULTATION
3.1
The Website: Stet
In order to enable direct participation in changing the text of the GPL, and do so on a large
scale, the FSF commissioned the construction of custom software named “Stet”. Stet’s goal
was to enable transparent commenting on versions of the license text as they were
released. This required both the ability to easily make comments, either through the web or
via email, and the ability to see what portions of the text others had commented on. At the
time, this kind of collaborative commenting system was completely novel. After the
successful completion of the GPL revision process, a number of government representatives
contacted SFLC and FSF about adopting Stet for use in public discussions of pending
legislation. FSF released Stet as free software under the GPL, and it has even been
improved upon and enhanced into the “co-ment”
14
system by Phillip Aigrain’s Paris-based
firm Sopinspace.
15
As discussed in the comment system documentation,
16
every effort was made to ensure
that public discussion would remain productive. This was accomplished through a focus on
diplomacy and public engagement at all times and by requiring that each comment be tied
to specific language in the draft or language that should be inserted into the draft rather
than opening the door to demands and opinions disconnected from license text. As a result,
and despite sometimes heated tempers during the course of the 19 month process, the
public comments remained productive without any moderation.
In total, 2,635 comments were made over the course of the revision process. All four drafts
of the GPLv3 are still available with their public comments visible. As explained in the
documentation, areas of the text with highlighting indicate areas with corresponding
comments. The color of the highlight indicates the volume of the comments on that section,
with yellow as the lowest volume of comments and red as the highest volume. In order to
view the comments associated with a particular highlighted section, one simply needs to
click on the text and the comments will load on the screen to the right of the license text.
Draft 1, with 967 comments
17
Draft 2, with 727 comments
18
Draft 3, with 649 comments
19
Draft 4, with 292 comments
20
13
http://gplv3.fsf.org/original-process-definition/
14
http://www.co-ment.com/
15
http://www.sopinspace.com
16
http://gplv3.fsf.org/wiki/index.php/Comment_system
17
http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/gplv3-draft-1
18
http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/gplv3-draft-2
19
http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/gplv3-draft-3
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