[tlug] GPL V3

[stephen@example.com]

burlingk@example.com writes:

 > What are people's oppinions about the discussion draft for GPL V.3?

Gag me.  Ah, you can't.  So I guess I'll speak.

GPL v.2 is a better document, with a lot of problems that should have
been fixed in a GPL v2.1.  That will never happen, now.  :-(

GPL v.3 is incompatible with GPL v.2, and there is a lot of code (our
favorite kernel, for one) which is copyrighted by people who saw the
God-Forsaken Documentation License and decided they wanted no part of
what the FSF might come up with next.  (Ie, their permissions notices
specify "GPL v.2.  Period.")  They are not particularly impressed with
GPLv3 draft.  So GPL v.3 is highly likely to result in a partition of
the free software space, for almost no gain that I can see.

The only saving grace is the attempt to bring sanity to the patent
license by providing an explicit no-action covenant rather than
depending on an implicit license.  But the current draft really screws
the pooch there.  The first paragraph (including the definition of
"essential patent claims" in the preamble) of section seems to allow a
patent worded as 

    Claim 1.  A foo for frobbing bars.
    Claim 2.  A foo as in Claim 1, with a GUI for viewing baz.

to be embodied in such a way (eg, a library implementing only foo)
such that a GUI foo cannot be implemented in free software.  That
seems reasonable to me, but the froth I've seen around the web
suggests that very few FS advocates like it.

Larry Rosen also has said and I quote

     2. Grant of Patent License. Licensor grants You a worldwide, 
     royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable license, under 
     patent claims owned or controlled by the Licensor that are 
     embodied in the Original Work as furnished by the Licensor,
     for the duration of the patents, to make, use, sell, offer 
     for sale, have made, and import the Original Work and 
     Derivative Works. [OSL/AFL 3.0]

  If the License you're thinking about contains different words, longer or
  more sentences, definitions of such things as "essential patent claims" and
  other complexities, ask its author or licensor if that license means the
  same thing as the one sentence above.

Ie, he suspects (but is unwilling to argue in public) that "essential
claims" is an attempt to FUD somebody that more than the claims
embodied in the Original Work are up for grabs.

[For non-lawyers, the significance of Larry's license is two-fold.
(1) Claims are either embodied in an entity or they are not.  A good
lawyer can tell you yes or no 95% of the time.  For any claim embodied
in the software, you are granted explicit permission to do everything
that the patentee has the right to prohibit.  (2) You don't give away
the advanced applications of your idea with the basic insight, as long
as you have explicitly claimed them.  There are still lots of risks
and paperwork costs involved in dealing properly with patents, but at
least in principle you can know what you're dealing with.]

Paragraph 2 is (still) a bloody abortion.  The only way I can read
that is that putting the software on a public website completely
absolves you from all responsibility for dealing with the patent that
you have licensed and others have not.  The only risk that you or the
patentee are facing is that a judge might decide that you are
contributing to infringement, but AFAICS that wording is completely
compatible with a disclaimer that downloading the software is free but
that users must deal with any patent infringement issues themselves.
[Option (a) (indemnifying your downstream against patent infringement)
is a non-starter.  Nobody except maybe IBM or Microsoft can afford to
do that, and even then it would be like wearing a sweatshirt reading
"SCO me harder!"]

What I believe that means in practice is that if RSA had wanted to
release RSAREF under the GPLv3 without giving up any of their rights
in the patent, all they would need to do is hand it to a third party
with a patent license *which is not the GPLv3* that permits them to
put it up for download and sublicense *RSAREF*, not any of the patent
claims, under the GPLv3.

In the preamble, the definition of "convey" is scary.  If I propagate
a work under DRM, I really don't think I've conveyed it, because the
recipient can't make copies.  Oops.

Section 3 is no better than it ever was.  Not only does it
discriminate against fields of use (and so arguably will not be
OSD-compatible), but it is clearly viral since you waive all right to
enforce technical measures, not just the right to prohibit
modification of the GPLv3 portion.  Furthermore, under the current
wording it would seem to apply to third parties who are unaware of the
GPL status of the technology.  Oops.

I also don't like the fact that GPLv3 Section 3 doesn't distinguish
between access controls and copying controls.  Use of GPLv3-ed
software (eg, GPG) means that you waive your right to sue snoops (eg,
your employer) who attempt to read your encrypted files under the
DMCA.  RMS rightly replies that this is neither the intended
application of that law nor likely to be important in practice, but I
think it's sleazy to ignore the possibility.

 > My oppinion is that the original draft was just as jacked up as a lot of
 > the hype suggested it was, but that the second draft is starting to look
 > a lot better. :-)

Note that a third draft was released about a month ago.