9b9958264b
This is a small but significant change and may deserve more expanded explanation, but here's a quick one. The GPL has a "UI legal notice" provision (often ignored by licensors and licensees, the subject of some past controversy in some quarters, and the basis of Bradley Kuhn's hack for the original AGPL to boot). One of the late changes made to GPLv3 was a modification of section 7 to make GPL-compatible additional terms requiring preservation of author attributions not just in source code but in the UI legal notice displayed by the running program. This change was the result of lobbying by Larry Augustin and John Roberts (the SugarCRM founder, not the person who later became Chief Justice of the United States). Those familiar with free software legal history will recall that around this time there was considerable controversy over the so-called "attribution licenses" in use by companies like SugarCRM and Socialtext. These licenses, labeled "badgeware licenses" by their critics, typically required the licensee to preserve a prominent display of the logo of the original commercial licensor even where the licensee had made modifications (and even in contexts where compliance with such a requirement would not be possible). The late change made to GPLv3, accompanied by a factored-out definition of "Appropriate Legal Notices", was not intended to allow badgeware as then practiced, but rather a lesser form of badgeware: for example, preservation of a "powered by" logo (with a requirement to link back to the original licensor's website), to the extent it was a reasonable author attribution requirement, could be a GPLv3-compatible condition, though the FSF never intended to authorize licensors to limit discretion over how the licensee might opt to comply with the Appropriate Legal Notices requirement, including any permitted lesser badgeware requirement. A number of companies took advantage of this feature of GPLv3 (and AGPLv3). It is now clear that it was a policy error to authorize limited badgeware. It is my impression that companies have tended to abuse this feature, imposing requirements more restrictive than I believe the FSF ever intended, and it is not even entirely clear that the logo preservation requirements are truly reasonable author attribution requirements. The minimum change made here is to remove the explicit authorization of additional requirements to preserve author attributions in Appropriate Legal Notices. |
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| README.md | ||
GPL.next
GPL.next is a fork of the GNU General Public License, version 3, initiated by Richard Fontana. Contributions of patches, ideas, and criticism are welcome. Forks in the GitHub sense are encouraged. The goal of this effort is to develop an improved strong copyleft free software license.
This is not an effort endorsed by the Free Software Foundation or the GNU project. This is also not an effort associated in any way with Red Hat (Richard Fontana's employer).
The FSF has asserted copyright in the text of the GNU GPLv3. However, the FSF has expressly authorized (though discouraged) modified versions of the GNU GPL, subject to certain conditions: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL
As requested by the FSF in the aforementioned FAQ, I (Richard Fontana) have thought twice and have decided to proceed with this fork. Note that every effort shall be made to make this fork compatible with all existing versions of the GNU GPL.
The meta-license from the FSF stated in its FAQ shall be the license of all versions of the GPL.next license text (to the extent that such versions retain any copyrightable material from versions of the GNU GPL in which the FSF has asserted copyright). Restated here by me, that meta-license is as follows:
- Everyone has permission to use terms from any version of the GNU GPL (with or without modifications) in creating a new license text, without any restriction, other than these requirements: (1) the license must be "call[ed] ... by another name"; (2) no existing version of a GNU license Preamble may be included; and (3) if the instructions-for-use at the end of the GNU GPL are copied or adapted, they must be modified "enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention GNU".
I consider the name "GPL.next" to be "another name" in the sense meant in this meta-license. (I would consider it a violation of the meta-license to use the "GNU" name, of course.) Contrary to what some believe, the "G" in "GPL" does not stand for "GNU", but "General"; "GPL" means "license to (or for) the general public". As such, the name "GPL" strikes me as having been conceived as generic. Indeed, the common use of "public license" in free software license names without the word "general" probably represents a historical failure to parse "GPL" correctly.
All copyrightable materials included in this project, other than any copied or adapted portions of GNU license texts and except where otherwise indicated, are dedicated to the public domain to the maximum extent permissible under applicable law, pursuant to the Creative Commons CC0 Universal Public Domain Dedication 1.0 (see the file CC0 for details).