OSI Board approves GPL v3 and LGPL v3
The GPL v3 and LGPL v3 were unanimously approved by the OSI board at our monthly board meeting this week. Since this is a personal blog, I’d like to personally acknowledge all those who made it possible:
- The Free Software Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center. Stallman, Moglen, and many others worked tirelessly, first to identify the improvements needed after 16 years of experience with the GPLv2, and second to formulate legal implementations of those improvements that honored the spirit of free software while navigating new legal contexts and challenges, and third, to be willing to suffer the slings and arrows of a global constituency with deep vested interests in various aspects of the status quo
- The A, B, C, and D committee members who, while arguing for their own interests, also developed a better understanding of each other’s needs and fears, and who ultimately informed the final draft of these new licenses
- The broader communities of both the free software camp and the open source camps, who both challenged and supported the license drafting process. These communities made the drafts stronger as a result
- Finally, the community of license-discuss@opensource.org, who took it upon themselves to review a license in painstaking detail and to formulate a uniquely “open source” view of this free software license.
Already, a number of companies have announced their intention to shift from non-approved licenses to the GPL v3. With this approval, such a shift will enlarge the open source world for all of us. As they do make these changes (not just make announcements), I’ll make an effort to recognize their actions, too.