GPLv3: The Public Process
Ciarán O'Riordan
Free Software Foundation Europe
http://www.fsfeurope.org/
Who am I?
- I work for FSFE
- I mostly work on proposed EU laws
- My job is to help the community participate in setting
policy
- I'm a programmer, not a lawyer
What I will cover
- Why this is important
- The process, as it was planned
- What happened in practice
- Example: the tivoisation discussion
- Others issues that have come up
- EU legislation, very briefly
Why is the process interesting
- This is something we've never done before
- Goal #1: Enable participation
- Goal #2: Document this new thing
Why this is important?
- To make our life easier, we can:
- #1 Lobby, which takes years and moves inches
- #2 Use market power - but we're currently wasting that
- #3 Do the best we can with our licences - this is the
small benefit of the current copyright system
Not for lawyers
- I should clarify: This is not for lawyers
- We have 100 lawyers to translate to legalese
- We need input from users, developers, businesses
- Do it right, now, so it will last
Why now?
- Laws: software patents, DMCA, EUCD
- Technology: DRM
- Evironment: We have opponents
- Us: We've tens of millions of users spanning every continent
- We have lawyers everywhere
The process, in theory
- There is a website, collecting comments
- There are 4 committees
- Richard makes the final decision with advice from lawyers
The process, in detail: 1
The process, in detail: 2
- Committees: Lawyers, companies, projects, hackers
- They work in different ways, private or transparent
- ...and Richard makes the final decision with advice from lawyers
In reality: 1
- Many people used gplv3.fsf.org
- Others talked on mailing lists, forums, and to the
press
- The latter had to be listened to, but it was very
difficult to know what they were talking about
In reality: 2
- The companies (committee B) have been most active
- The hackers have been least active
In reality: 3
- Richard gets the final say...
- ...but his output has to be acceptable
Tivoisation
- A technique that manufacturers use to produce a
computer, to sell to you, whose software they can update
but you can't
- 1. Put a chip in
- 2. The chip checks software before being run
- 3. The information to authorise software is a secret
- So they can give you upgrades, but no one else can and
you can't modify
Why is this harmful? - individual
- Tivos contain spyware
- Tivos are prevented from copying data
- Tivoisation means you can't fix these problems
Why is this harmful? - sustainability
- If this spreads
- Programmable computers are replaced with
non-programmable computers
- ...makes users become non-programmers
- Free software development could grind to a halt
- So this is a basic survival mechanism
Tivoisation: The Controversy
- The tivoisation clause was very controversial
- Some really didn't want it
- People worried about voting machines a medical devices
Tivoisation: The Compromise
- Draft 3 compromised: only bans tivoisation in user
products, things for personal or home use
- If you distribute binaries for a User Product, you have
to provide any information necessary to install and run the
software
Gone: Patent retaliation
- Patent retaliation is where you terminate someone's
rights if they sue users of your software
- This became popular in the late 90s
- GPLv3 drafts 1 and 2 included a narrow patent
retaliation clause
- ...but it has been removed because it was too much
complexity for something no one really liked
Gone: Licence compatibility
- Two licences are compatible if software under the two
licences can be distributed while complying with both
licences
- The GPL says you cannot add further restrictions - so if
another licence contains other requirements, then developers
cannot combine that code with GPL'd code
- For example, attribution
- Drafts 1 and 2 tried to solve this with a list of
permitted additional requirements
- ...but only 1 or 2 licences became compatible, and
people didn't like the complexity
Note #1: Novell
- What's wrong?
- So Novell is no longer motivated to find a general solution
- Worse, they benefit from increasing the risk to others
because the bonus of their distro is that they have MS protection
- Microsoft are now profiting from our software, and they
are more motivated to spread fear
- AFAIK, the details of the Novell-MS deal will be
published within a month
Note #2: Relicensing projects
- Can the Linux kernel relicense?
- Permission will have to be gotten from almost everyone
- This can be done over a long period
- Mozilla already did this
- Will they? We can just write the best licence
possible
Note #3: SaaS
- Hard to enforce
- People didn't like it
- Not as big a problem as we thought in 1998
- Event on June 9th in Rome to discuss this
Could it be shorter?
- V1: 1230 words
- V2: 2000 words
- V3 draft 1: 3500 words
- V3 draft 2: 3900 words
- V3 draft 3: 4200 words
- ...but longer doesn't mean more complex
GPLv3 Timeline
- January 2006: first draft
- July 2006: second draft
- March 2007: third draft
- End of May: fourth draft
- 30 more days until final version
- So now is the time to participate
Today: EU Legislation
- Most of my work is legislation
- This is work done inside the parliament
- This requires spending a lot of time with those who are
not your natural allies
- That's why I'm in a suit
Today: Software patents
- The directive is gone
- Status: crazy patent offices, ok parliament, good courts
- There are new proposals to replace the courts with
patent office appointees
- EPLA and Community Patent are the names
Today: IPRED2
- There was a recent vote to criminalise most copyright
infringement
- This attacks society's basic freedom to participate in
the software development
- It makes the many grey areas too scary - actions won't
become illegal but people will be so afraid that they will
act like they are illegal
- We won a small success, but we need more at the next
stage; probably rejection
Conclusion
- Now is the time to take a look
- http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3
- The LGPL and GFDL are also being updated
- Support FSFE: http://fsfe.org
- Questions? ...about GPLv3 or EU legislation?