c6cc5a1220
This commit deletes the paragraph in section 11 which was intended, as a hack on a feature of the Microsoft/Novell deal of 2006, to cause Microsoft patent licenses/covenants granted to Novell customers to be "automatically extended" to all downstream recipients of the software associated with the SLES certificates distributed by Microsoft pursuant to the deal. Historical evidence shows that this provision was taken somewhat seriously, and its cleverness and creativity are to be appreciated. However, it must be admitted that it has served no valid purpose in the past five years. To my knowledge no one has ever attempted to invoke the provision (or had need to invoke it) to argue for the existence of a patent license or covenant, and it would be exceedingly strange for anyone to have done so. The provision is worded generally, but it is tied to one deal between two specific companies and is intended to punish one particular company. Whatever its political value was in early 2007, the provision today is either a no-op or serves to intensify anti-GPLv3 FUD. It needs to go. One can view this provision as a sort of odd exception to the historical narrowing of the general patent license grant now contained in paragraphs 1-3 of section 11. Early public drafts of GPLv3 had featured a "pure distribution" approach to patent licensing. Whether that narrowing of the patent license grant was good policy or not is an open question, but it is worth noting that this anti-Microsoft provision would have been pointless had a pure-distribution patent licensing policy been retained. |
||
|---|---|---|
| CC0 | ||
| GPL.next | ||
| 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).