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)?

Microsoft denies that it has anything to do with GPLv3 or vice versa. Novell, however, is making it clear that it will be supporting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in the future, including any components, such as future versions of Samba, that are licensed under GPLv3.

Jeremy Allison is a long-time free software advocate and a lead developer of Samba. He has given a talk on why Samba chose the GNU GPL version 3 on several occasions, and we wanted to highlight that talk again as part of our series.

The Samba development team has just announced the release of Samba 4.0. Samba is a Free Softwareimplementation of SMB/CIFS protocols, which makes it possible for any system running Samba to function as a file, print and authentication server suite for Microsoft Windows and UNIX-like clients.

Nine months following the heralded official release of the GPLv3 licenses, and with the more recent addition of the Affero GPLv3, adoption has surpassed 50% of my projections.

While he sees the GPLv3 as "extremely good", Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell believes that the free software licence still needs strengthening.

"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.""

I recently read the discussion on the GCC development mailing list related to GCC's transition to GPLv3. Despite generating 172 emails, the transition was quite smooth actually.

Nine months following the heralded official release of the GPLv3 licenses, and with the more recent addition of the Affero GPLv3, adoption has surpassed 50% of my projections.