The free software movement's most important license -- version three of the GNU General Public License was unveiled by the Free Software Foundation late last month. It comes roughly 16 years after its wildly successful predecessor, GPLv2, became one of the most used software licenses ever. Today, approximately three quarters of the world's free software packages are distributed under GPLv2.

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.

"The Free Software Foundation today released the final version of the new GNU General Public License, GPLv3. Novell welcomes and supports GPLv3 and we appreciate the collaborative process that led to its conclusion."

"The license changes keep coming. While work is wrapping up on the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3), the Free Software Foundation has released the first discussion draft of the Affero GPLv3."

In June of 2007, after many months delay, the Free Software Software Foundation released GPLv3. Since that time, the license has been gaining an increased following, but without much threat to GPLv2 in first place.

"For all that a great deal of attention was given to the arrival of the GPLv3 (Gnu General Public License, version 3), few software developers announced plans to move their programs to this new license. Now, open-source programmers are beginning to give the new license a try."

Tell me, is anyone of significance -- besides the Samba Group for its CIFS (Common Internet File System) Windows-compatible file and print server program, and the license's creators, the FSF (Free Software Foundation) -- going to adopt the GPLv3 (GNU General Public License Version 3)?

If anyone out there still thinks that the main Linux kernel might change to the GNU GPLv3 (GNU General Public License Version 3) anytime soon, you can forget about it. At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit at the Googleplex, five of the leading Linux kernel developers said that they couldn't see anything like a good enough reason to switch to the forthcoming free software license.

Microsoft has issued a statement about its position in regard to the Free Software Foundation's version 3 of the GNU General Public License, which was crafted in part to protect users from possible Microsoft patent infringement lawsuits. Microsoft's stance?