Latest Draft of GNU License Open for Edits

The Free Software Foundation has just released the third discussion draft for version 3 of the GNU General Public License, a widely used free software license written by activist and hacker Richard Stallman. The draft will be available for comment and discussion at the FSF's website until the end of May, and marks an important step in the process towards drafting the finalized version, which is due to be released later this year.

This follows a year in which certain provisions of the license were heavily debated. Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernal project, who is regarded as a major figure in the Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) movement, recently made these remarks about newest draft of the GPLv3. At the beginning of the drafting process in 2005, one blogger examined the question of "How important is the GPL?" In 2006, the Free Software Foundation introduced the license to an international audience through a series of conferences in Italy, Japan, India, and the U.S. Contributors from all over the world have submitted thousands of comments on previous drafts, and have already actively begun commenting on the newest draft here.

Wikipedia, which is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, lays out the definition of "free software" for us. For more information on the F/OSS movement, see this essay by Richard Stallman on "Why Software Should be Free" and "Why Copyleft?"