SUNNYVALE, Calif. (Sept. 19, 2008) — As software developers the world over prepare to mark the 25th anniversary of the GNU System, Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGIC) today announced it is releasing a new version of the SGI Free Software License B.

Version 2 of the General Public License ("GPL 2") has led a long and prosperous life in the software community since its release in 1991. It has been embraced by software developers and used more than any other free software license.

After nine months, an open secret can finally be acknowledged: The OpenGL code that is responsible for 3-D acceleration on GNU/Linux, which was released by SGI in 1999, has been running on licenses that were accepted by neither the Free Software Foundation (FSF) nor the Open Source Initiative.

"An objection I've had to many programming books and web sites is that they don't make sample code available under a free software license. This is within the rights of the author, of course, but it seems counter to the spirit of teaching and sharing knowledge to restrict the use of example code.

"The GNU Affero General Public License or GNU AGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. The GNU AGPL is similar to the GNU General Public License, except that it has an additional section to cover use over a computer network. It closes what is commonly known as the Application service provider loophole of the GNU General Public License.

Late, and over a year in development, the GNU General Public License version three (GPLv3) is finally here. The GPL is important as it's the most widely used Free Software license, with around seventy percent of Free Software released under its terms.

Oslo, Norway, 18 January - 2008 - Trolltech ASA is licensing its Qt cross-platform development framework under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPL v3), with immediate effect.

Qt is already available under the GPL v2 and will continue to be so in addition to the GPL v3.

The GPL v3 license will make it easy and safe for free software developers to use Trolltech’s Qt with the most recent license framework from the Free Software Foundation. Trolltech hopes that its move will inspire free software projects to use GPL v3 when programming with Qt.

"BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Monday, November 3, 2008 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the release of version 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL). This version of the license allows public wikis to relicense their FDL-covered materials under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 3.0 license..."

"BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA—Monday, November 19, 2007—The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today published the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (GNU AGPLv3).