"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.

Interview with Richard Stallman about various topics; about the difference between the free software movement and open source, why Stallman rejects the term "intellectual property", the GPLv3 and Torvalds view on it, Microsofts patent claims, and about the Microsoft-Novell deal.

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.

"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..."

"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."

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.

Distributors lose their rights when they violate GPLv2, but the Free Software Foundation is more forgiving in its license enforcement to encourage continued participation in the free software community. GPLv3 has improved termination provisions to codify this approach, giving developers one more reason to upgrade.

Video available of this announcement. You can watch Stallman give an overview of the major changes in the license, and his reflections on the drafting process.

Highest Quality (103MB): http://gplv3.fsf.org/static/release/rms_gplv3_launch_high_quality.ogg
BitTorrent: http://gplv3.fsf.org/static/release/rms_gplv3_launch_high_quality.ogg.to...

Alan Cox talks about cooperation with hardware vendors, patent law, microkernels, and GPLv3: "I think [the MS-Novell deal] is a bad idea and that Novell are going to get stung by the GPLv3, and rightfully so. The license is designed to keep the software free, if it fails to do this then it needs fixing, so GPLv3 hopefully will fix this flaw."