Free Software Foundation releases GPL 3
After 18 months of sometimes inflamed debate, the Free Software Foundation on Friday released version 3 of the General Public License, a highly influential legal document that embodies the principles of the free and open-source programming movement.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Free Software Foundation has closed out an 18-month public rewrite of the General Public License, its first major overhaul in 16 years, after circulating a third discussion draft in March that folded community feedback into the text. The process was openly adversarial: Microsoft funded a study attacking the draft process in May, and the FSF spent June arguing that the finished license would force Microsoft's patent covenant with Novell to extend to all GPLv3 users.
The release lands on the same day CNET asks whether Apple's locked-down iPhone could violate GPL 3 — a framing the FSF itself encouraged by positioning version 3 as freeing users against exactly that kind of restriction. The final provisions were also read as good news for Novell customers, keeping the Microsoft-Novell alliance inside the license's terms rather than outside them.
First-order effects
- Every project and distributor shipping GPL code now faces an adoption decision: stay on GPL 2 or move to version 3, with the FSF's stated design putting Novell's distribution in the crosshairs — if Novell includes GPLv3 code, the FSF asserts Microsoft's patent covenant must cover all GPLv3 users.
- Novell and Microsoft get immediate clarity from the final text, which was shaped to accommodate their customers, while Apple faces a live question over whether the iPhone's restrictions put it at odds with the new license.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft, having already funded research attacking the draft process, is positioned to keep contesting GPLv3 through legal and PR channels rather than accepting the covenant-extension reading, turning license interpretation into an active corporate battleground.
- Distributors and enterprises with mixed GPL portfolios must weigh dual-licensing and version-selection strategies, since adopting GPLv3 pulls them into the patent-covenant fight that version 2 never forced.
Third-order effects
- If the FSF's covenant-extension mechanism holds up, license terms become a tool for dismantling proprietary patent-protection deals around open code — shifting power from bilateral corporate agreements to whatever the license text itself mandates.
- A contested, politicized rewrite after 18 months sets a precedent for how much friction the community will tolerate in future license revisions, and whether copyleft licensing can keep functioning as neutral infrastructure when vendors fund campaigns against it.
The trend: Open-source licensing is moving from settled legal plumbing to an active front in the conflict between free-software governance and corporate patent strategy, with the FSF using license text itself as leverage.