"Paradoxically, the viral clause, the part of the GPL licensing framework that so many people objected to because it wasn't business friendly, made the license business friendly - in the future, a license that liberates business from the drug of DRM and the prison of software patents may turn out to have been equally prescient and business friendly..."

Greve begins by explaining why GPLv3 provides a higher level of security for your project but also reassures everyone that it's no difficulty if projects such as the kernel wish to remain GPLv2. He does raise some legal issues the kernel folks likely will wish to think about.

"Want to laugh? Microsoft Says It Is Not Bound by GPLv3" -- they think they can so declare, like an emperor, and it becomes fiat. It's not so easy. I gather Microsoft's lawyers have begun to discern the GPL pickle they are in."

The Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) has offered a prize for the best campaign against Microsoft's attempt to gain international standardisation for its Office format.

But even Microsoft's childlike "that's mine" attitude about intellectual property and patent violation claims against open source doesn't explain the company's resistance to Red Hat. The question to ask: Whose intellectual property rights is Microsoft seeking to protect?

Soon, the Free Software Foundation—which deserves much of the credit for delivering these liberties—may find itself in the odd position of being likewise jettisoned by a large and important part of its user base for the FSF's refusal to respect the needs and desires of its own stakeholders.

Now that the final version of the GNU General Public Licence version 3 has been released, the in-depth analysis of its implications can begin. Two of the first commentaries to be published have come from the legal world, and there are doubtless many more being prepared for purely internal use within software companies wondering whether to adopt the new licence.