New GPL Penalizes Patents and DRM
According to an MSNBC article, upcoming changes to the GPL could penalize patents and DRM.
From the article:
Article
From the article:
"Software patents are clearly a menace to society and innovation. We like this to be more explicit. The basic idea is that if someone patents software, he loses the right to use free software. It's like a patent retaliation clause," Greve said.
Stallman will write a draft version of the new GPL by December, after which it will be evaluated by thousands of organizations, software developers and software users in 2006.Good idea, but will this actually reduce patents and DRM? Possibly, but I'm not sure.
Article
Written by Justin @ 9/06/2005 01:11:00 PM | Permalink
2 Comments:
At 9/06/2005 06:40:00 PM,
elf's DH said…
There is something a bit ironic in an article about people against software patents on MSNBC. :-)
Since we haven't yet seen the text of GPL 3.0, it's hard to tell how patents and DRM will be handled. But, maybe "penalizes" is a word in the wrong direction.
The GPL doesn't "penalize" proprietary software, it encourages free software. It does that by giving a company/programmer a choice: Use all the the GPL software that's available and gain help from the FOSS community, but at the price of keeping the software free; or, make closed-source software, and build the system without any help. There are probably similar ways that the license can be used to encourage freeing patents (until software patents are finally abolished) and also encourage free distribution mechanisms.
At 9/06/2005 06:49:00 PM,
Justin said…
Yeah, it is ironic about this on MSNBC.
I used the word 'penalize' since it was used on Slashdot, but maybe it is a little strong. But anything that could reduce software patents and DRM has my support.
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