GPLv3 launched
Well, yesterday saw the launch of GPLv3 as well as the iPhone. I think they did this to try and get extra publicity by questioning the goodness of the iPhone with respect to freedom. Unfortunately, I think it was kind of a big mistake - in the mass consumer hype of the iPhone, almost no reporting on what would otherwise be big nerd news was to be seen in the media.
Nevertheless, this is big news. The result of a long process of public commenting and refining, it was a very open process. The process and license itself debuted to mixed and often heated debate, but over time it seems to have mellowed it’s harshest critics and won some converts as well.
It’s two main thrusts are protection from Tivoization and Treacherous (or Trusted) computing. Tivoization the creation of a system that uses GPL software but uses hardware to prevent the user from running software other than the specific version that distributor wants, a tactic which obviously impinges on the user’s freedom and goes against the spirit of GPLv2.
“Trusted Computing” is a hadrware solution to DRM. The hardware has embedded a key with it’s own notions of who it should trust and who it should not, outside the control of the user. Again, a system that’s found a loophole in GPLv2 hopefully closed in GPLv3.
It will be interesting to see how adoption of this goes with the big free projects. There’s was a lot of criticism initially, but hopefully everyone’s made up and is friends again.
