Tags: Apple, Solaris - OpenSolaris - Project Indiana

Free Software Foundation set to release GPLv3 on Friday

The upcoming Friday is going to be an historic day. Apple is scheduled to launch their much awaited Apple iPhone mobile phone product and the Free Software Foundation would be releasing the much in controversy update to the GNU GPL.

Incidentally, the GPL version 3 is coming out after 16 years of the version 2 which is used by thousands of software developers around the world.

Brett Smith, licensing compliance engineer for the foundation said in a statement that one of the improvements in this update is related to a copyright technology not found anywhere in the world. Their aim is to provide uniformity in different jurisdictions.

He said: “There’s a lot of copyright laws that talk about distribution, but they don’t mean the same thing. Now, GPL talks about propagation and conveying.”

This updated version would also ensure that users would be able to modify software installed on personal computers or in household devices.

Sun Microsystems is one of the companies which has spoken about the possibility of supporting this updated GPL. The company recently said that they were considering offering its Solaris OS under the GPL 3.

FSF President Richard Stallman recently spoke about this version: “The reason to migrate is because of the existing problems which GPLv3 will fix, such as ‘tivoization,’ DRM, and threats from software patents. Further advantages of GPLv3 include better internationalization, gentler termination, support for BitTorrent, and compatibility with the Apache license.”