Some developers in the Linux community have taken the discussion about the new General Public License terms to a contentious point: using it for the next Linux kernel, while a greater challenge over DRM looms. The first draft of the GPL version 3 terms crafted by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen became public last week, as a conference held at MIT. This work represents the first update to the GPL in fifteen years, the Free Software Foundation noted how a couple of prominent developers he wrote. A bigger issue rising on GPL 3's horizon will be digital rights management (DRM), which Stallman and Moglen call "digital restrictions management. Ars Technica The wording of the language makes it clear that GPL3 is aiming to exclude software and products that utilize DRM. This is not entirely surprising, as Richard Stallman, the creator of the original GPL and one of the two co-authors of GPL3, already hinted as such. "We might put in something refusing to allow DRM modifications. Maybe, maybe not," he said in an interview in April 2005. The use of the word "Restrictions" instead of "Rights" in the DRM acronym appears to further enforce their anti-DRM position. Ars Technica extended the DRM issue to Torvalds himself, by noting his general distancing from the topic: Interestingly, Linus himself has a very hands-off approach to DRM. In a statement on a Linux developer mailing list, he stated that he has no strong feelings on the issue one way or another, and resented people trying to turn Linux into an anti-DRM crusade: "I've had some private discussions with various people about this already, and I do realize that a lot of people want to use the kernel in some way to just make DRM go away, at least as far as Linux is concerned. I also don't necessarily like DRM myself, but I still ended up feeling the same: I'm an "Oppenheimer", and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to." document.write("Email the author here.") Drag this to your Bookmarks. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo My Web David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
Linux Developers Tackle GPL 3
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