On Friday, June 29, at 12 noon (EDT), the Free Software Foundation will officially release the GNU GPL version 3. Please, join us in celebration as we bring to a close eighteen months of public outreach and comment in revision of the world's most popular free software license.

"SJVN jubilates: GPLv3 picks up traction. Consulting gpl3.palamida.com, a site who monitors the conversions to GPLv3 and LGPLv3, he notes: "out of the 3,205 projects licensed under GPLv2 or later, about 8 percent of them have moved to the GPLv3.""

Several large software companies seem satisfied with GPLv3, albeit cautious about adopting it (as corporations are wont to do). IBM intends to release some software under GPLv3, and MySQL says it will switch if GPLv3 is adopted widely.

"Breaking from the KDE 4.0 release event right now is word that Trolltech will be releasing Qt to be released under the GPLv3 license. An official announcement will be made by Trolltech regarding this GPLv2 to GPLv3 license update on Monday, January 21, 2008..."

Now that the GPLv3 has been finalised and is now released (and we’re starting to see projects adopting it), many of us in the free software community have been wondering what Linus Torvalds’ stance is on the final version.

We're now at 199 projects that have adopted GPLv3, which represents a 21% increase over last week. Clearly, GPLv3 has legs. Significantly, Snort made the move this past week. This is a major coup for GPLv3.

"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.

Stallman added that it's extremely important for Free Software users to upgrade their licenses to GPLv3 so that Novell will eventually put in the new version and the community will get this benefit.

Stallman advised viewers to be wary of those that advise against moving to GPLv3.

"Microsoft made a few mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, and GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community," explains GPLv3 co-author Richard M. Stallman.