After a year and a
half, GPLv3 is
finally due this Friday, June 29th. Starting with the January 2006,
our focus in FSFE has on raising awareness and informing the free
software community. Making transcripts
of the
January 16th launch
and RMS's
first GPLv3 presentations and
getting them
on Slashdot was a good start.
We will have a situation where GPLv3 has been read by many people
and a lot of the community have been involved in debating the words
used.
Licensing is a very important consideration for the free software
community. It requires experts, and it has to be done by people who
have the free software community's interests in mind. So it's
something we can't let our corporate associates do on our behalf.
Some lawyers were required, but the type of expert we needed most
were those who care about the long term future of free software and
who would give their time to research and discuss the implications
of various policy decisions.
Because the free software community had never done anything like
this before, there were almost no people with this type of
experience. That's why raising maximum awareness was essential.
For FSFE's part, having secured
funding from
NLnet, we
organised an
international conference in Barcelona. And thanks to funding
raised by others, and sometimes personal expense, we were able to
have speakers at 20 or 30 other events. That,
and all the
transcripts - with translations
in Dutch, Thai,
German,
French,
Spanish,
and maybe others. I was surprised at how popular the transcripts
were.
And after all that work, I think GPLv3 is in a strong position.
Many free
software users and distributors have probably not read GPL
version 2. That is because it is easy enough to use that people can
to use it by following the example of others and doing what seems
intuitive. With GPLv3, as well as having a new licence, I think we
now have a new level of licence knowledge in the community.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE's Fellowship
