Free Software Foundation releases "last call" draft of GPLv3

Yesterday the Free Software Foundation released the "last call" draft of version 3 of the GPL.  With less people finding the previous draft objectionable, this draft will probably be more acceptable and may be very close to the final version.  How quickly version 3 displaces version 2 in the market as the GPL of choice for those developers choosing to license under the GPL remains to be seen.

I noticed a couple of things. One is in that in my read through, I don't see the word derivative mentioned at all.  They use the term "modify" or a work "based on".  I guess we will have to see what the courts and lawyers say this means about derivative works.  Of course then there will be the Thomas Ptacek's of the world, who don't care what the lawyers or courts say and believe that if you at all package GPL licensed software with your software, your software should be free too.

Perhaps of greater interest is the provision that if you are distributing GPL 3 licensed software, you cannot enforce patent rights against users of that software.  In this article Richard Stallman of the FSF acknowledges that this was put in the license to protect against Microsoft's patent claims on Linux.  If Novell releases their Linux under GPL3 and Microsoft distributes it under the MS-Novell deal, they cannot then claim patent infringement on Linux users. It will be interesting to see what the Microsoft folks say and do about that. I think it also unusual to say the least that they ackowledge that they put this specific clause in just to thwart Microsoft.  I guess there is no love lost there.

Ultimately, how fast and widespread GPLv3 is adopted will determine how much it changes the open source landscape.