Open Source Licensing Set for 2006 Change

December 2, 2005: The mostly widely used and accepted Open Source software licence - GNU General Public Licence (GPL) - is currently undergoing a major consultative process with a view to producing GPL3 early in the new year.

The most publicly visible GPL-covered software is Linux in its many flavours. In fact the GNU prefix actually stands for 'Gnu's Not Linux'. Rising database star, MySQL is also covered by the GPL, as is Squid - one of the Internet's primary web proxy caching systems.

The review of the current GPL is being organised by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) which will release the first discussion draft of the new license for comment at the International Public Conference for GPLv3 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on January 16 and 17, 2006.

According to Richard Stallman, founder of the FSF: "The guiding principle for developing the GPL is to defend the freedom of all users," said Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation. "As we address the issues raised by the community, we will do so in terms of the four basic freedoms software users are entitled to -- to study, copy, modify and redistribute the software they use. GPLv3 will be designed to protect those freedoms under current technical and social conditions and will address new forms of use and current global requirements for commercial and non-commercial users."

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