First draft of text explaining GPLv3, geared toward newbies.

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Bradley M. Kuhn 2014-03-16 17:20:53 -04:00
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@ -835,10 +835,39 @@ greatly with the creation of GPLv3.
\section{The GNU General Public License, Version 3} \section{The GNU General Public License, Version 3}
RMS began drafting GPLv2.2 in mid-2002, and FSF ran a few discussion groups
during that era about new text of that license. However, rampant violations
of the GPL required more immediate attention of FSF's licensing staff, and as
such, much of the early 2000's was spent doing GPL enforcement
work\footnote{More on GPL enforcement is discussed in \tutorialpartsplit{a
companion tutorial, \texit{A Practical Guide to GPL
Compliance}}{Part~\ref{gpl-compliance-guide} of this tutorial}.}. In
2006, FSF began in earnest drafting work for GPLv3.
The GPLv3 process began in earnest in January 2006. It became clear that
many provisions of the GPL could benefit from modification to fit new
circumstances and to reflect what the entire community learned from
experience with version 2. Given the scale of revision it seems proper to
approach the work through public discussion in a transparent and accessible
manner.
The GPLv3 process continued through June 2007, culminating in publication of
GPLv3 and LGPLv3 on 29 June 2007, AGPLv3 on 19 November 2007, and the GCC
Runtime Library Exception on 27 January 2009.
All told, four discussion drafts of GPLv3, two discussion drafts of LGPLv3
and two discussion drafts of AGPLv3 were published and discussed.
Ultimately, FSF remained the final arbiter and publisher of the licenses, and
RMS himself their primary author, but input was sought from many parties, and
these licenses do admittedly look and read more like legislation as a result.
Nevertheless, all of the ``v3'' group are substantially better and improved
licenses.
\section{The Innovation of Optional ``Or Any Later'' Version} \section{The Innovation of Optional ``Or Any Later'' Version}
\section{Complexities of Two Simultaneously Popular Copylefts} \section{Complexities of Two Simultaneously Popular Copylefts}
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\chapter{GPLv2: Running Software and Verbatim Copying} \chapter{GPLv2: Running Software and Verbatim Copying}
\label{run-and-verbatim} \label{run-and-verbatim}