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In Search Of GPL Version 3: The Long Road To Nowhere

A month ago, I started down a path that I hoped would lead me to a great prize: an explanation from the authors of how the General Public License Version 3.0 was shaping up. Little did I know that this journey would contain more curves than San Francisco's Lombard Street.

GPLv3 has been through two drafts, each of which stirred up its own hornet's nest of criticism. Now we're approaching draft 3, the much anticipated finale. Many criticisms have been heeded and remedies included by authors Richard Stallman and attorney Eben Moglen. So its supporters are curious: how will the GPL's third draft deal with a ban on digital rights management? How will it bar patent work-arounds like the Microsoft/Novell deal? What about the little known Affero provision? You don't fully understand Affero? Well, neither do we.

I started with the Software Freedom Law Center, but Jim Garrison, its spokesman, said Eben Moglen was out of the country and besides, Eben was acting as an advisor to the Free Software Foundation. Ask them.

I did and got a somewhat formal response from Brett Smith, licensing compliance engineer there. "I should point out here that we at the Free Software Foundation and the Gnu project aren't part of the Open Source movement, but the free software movement. This movement has been campaigning for computer users' freedom since 1984. We discuss the ethical issues surrounding… " and so on.

I actually wanted to contact someone who would dig into the text of the next draft and point out where it was going. With time running out, I decided Brett wasn't that person, as helpful as he was. There was only one thing left to do and that was send an appeal direct to Richard Stallman, the head of the Free Software Foundation, and ask him what he thought.

In the meantime, Linux kernel author, Linus Torvalds, weighed in with a thoughtful critique of GPLv3 versus GPLv2, some of which is recounted here. The Web master of a sister publication had been forced to remove an earlier Torvalds commentary on GPLv3, he says, because it was laced with so many swear words that it violated the site's posting policy. But I didn’t find anything blue in Torvald's email.

Rather, I saw a crystal clear statement of support for the merits of GPLv2 rather than an attack on GPLv3, and a wariness of losing those merits in the move of GPLv3. I summarized some of those comments as an example of a knowledgeable critique of GPLv3 and forwarded them with my questions to Stallman.

"Is this story focusing on GPLv3 or on Torvalds' reaction to it?" he asked in an email response. The former, I assured him.

He proceeded to pick up almost where Brett Smith had left off: It's a common error, he wrote, "to label me, Gnu, Gnu/Linux or the Gnu GPL with the term, "open source." That is the slogan adopted in 1998 by people who reject the philosophy of the Free Software Movement. They have the right to promote their views, but we would like to be associated with our views, not theirs."

I was with him on that one and perhaps needed another lecture on it. But then came the ringer.

"I'll answer your questions if you will first promise me that the story will avoid a couple of frequent errors. One common error is calling the whole operating system 'Linux.' The system is basically Gnu; Linux is actually the kernel, one program in the system."

I am familiar with this debate. I've been familiar with it for many years. I have never wanted to take sides in it. But last year, when called on to write about "The World's Greatest Software," I adopted the position that Gnu tools and the Gnu system had contributed to Linux and deserved some of the credit for its creation. How much credit I didn't wish to resolve.

From my point of view, the Gnu project had produced a system that lacked a kernel that would allow the system to function as a whole. Linus Torvalds produced a kernel that allowed a Unix-like operating system to function the way it should. How to apportion credit isn't my problem. I merely recognize when a program runs and when it doesn't and give an edge to the program that runs.

Stallman went on: "When people call the whole system 'Linux,' they give the system's principal developer none of the credit. Would you please agree to distinguish consistently in your article between Linux, the kernel, and Gnu/Linux, the entire system?"

Even when I give the Gnu project some credit for Linux, I have never wanted to describe it as the system's principal developer. If the Gnu project was the system's principal developer, why wasn't the Gnu system running at the time Torvalds developed Linux? And if it was running, who was using it? I've never heard of someone using the Gnu operating system.

These and other doubts assailed me as I tried to respond to Stallman.

"Thanks for responding to my query… We agree that Linux owes a debt to the Gnu code that the Free Software Foundation produced in advance of Linux' creation. Information Week paid tribute to that debt…" and I cited the URL for "The Greatest Software Ever Written," probably hoping to generate a few more hits on the story.

Stallman cited this line back to me. "By calling the system 'Linux,' you give the main credit to a subsequent, secondary contributor, and presenting it as his work. To say that this system 'owes a debt' to its principal developer is not sufficient to overcome the unfairness of that overall picture," he wrote back.

You can publish whatever you wish, he concluded, but "I decline to help you do it."

For the record, in addition to referring to Linux as just plain ol' Linux, I had also refused to promise to always refer to Linux as Gnu/Linux. I have no quarrel with referring once to Gnu/Linux at the start of a story that is going to refer to a debate within the free software community. But I didn't want Information Week to be burdened with always referring to it that way. Besides, it simply isn't this publication's style to encumber something in that fashion when it has already established its own name recognition, I told him.

All of which was irrelevant. I had referred to Linux as Linux in my initial response and that was that.

With time really running out, I went back to the Software Freedom Law Center. "Jim," I said, "don't tell me Eben Moglen is out of the country--because our photographer just took a picture of him. Can I talk to him about GPLv3?" Jim Garrison dutifully set out to set up the interview.

On the day that I needed to submit my final additions to the story, Garrison sent me the following message: "Although Eben would ordinarily be happy to talk to you, Richard Stallman has instructed him not to… We must honor our client's request."

Information Week would like to present a balanced picture of what draft three of GPLv3 is going to look like. And we try to do so in the March 19 edition and on this Web site. Some of the most authoritative parties we can find comment on GPLv3 in that story, but two of the most authoritative parties will not be quoted. Just in case you're wondering why, it's not for lack of trying.

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