After 18 months of widespread consultation with community and corporate interests, the third versions of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) were released one year ago on 29 June 2007. In November, they were joined by the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL).

The Open Source Initiative's chairman, Michael Tiemann, announced Friday that the organization's licensing board have officially approve the version three of the General Public License and Lesser General Public License as OSI-approved.

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

"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.

The third version of the GNU General Public License (GPL) won't be released until the end of June. Yet, already, it is proving one of the most controversial developments ever in the free and open source software (FOSS) communities.

"The Free Software Foundation has published the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (GNU AGPLv3). This is a new license; it is based on version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3), but has an additional term to allow users who interact with the licensed software over a network to receive the source for that program. By publishing this license, the FSF aims to foster user and development communities around network-oriented free software..."

"The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today released the second discussion draft of the GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL). This new license is based on version 3 of the GNU GPL. It has a new requirement to ensure that users who interact with the software over a network can receive the source for that program..."

"After a year and a half of public consultation, thousands of comments, and four drafts, version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) was finally published on June 29. While there's been a lot of discussion about the license since the first draft appeared, not many people have talked about the benefits that it provides developers. We've published this guide to fill that gap.

"On June 29, 2007 the Free Software Foundation released the GNU General Public License, version 3. What happened since then? I had the opportunity to discuss many subjects with FSF's founder and president Richard Stallman..."