In version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3), the term "the Program" means one particular work that is licensed under GPLv3 and is received by a particular licensee from an upstream licensor or distributor. The Program is the particular work of software that you received in a given instance of GPLv3 licensing, as you received it.

"The Program" cannot mean "all the works ever licensed under GPLv3"; that interpretation makes no sense, because "the Program" is singular: those many different programs do not constitute one program.

In particular, this applies to the clause in section 10, paragraph 3 of GPLv3 which states

"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..."

The Open Document Format Alliance has released a paper [PDF] refuting the recent Burton Group's Report on ODF and MSOOXML. I asked for and received permission to publish it here on Groklaw. The ODF Alliance response takes 18 points from the Burton Group's Report and answers them point by point. I think you will enjoy it. And I have a few impressions of my own to share with you, and then you can tell me what you think of it all.

Several people, including Rob Weir (just yesterday in fact), said this was coming. The Propaganda Machine is hard at work and it will have you believe that OOXML is the Second Coming. You might be wondering what are we talking about. Where does one even begin? There is is a DDOS of disinformation at the moment.

Within the next 24-hours, Microsoft will submit to JTC1 a set of proposals for addressing the 3,522 comments that accompanied OOXML's failed ballot last September. We'll no doubt hear a lot of yip-yip-yahooing on their end. Expect a major media campaign. I don't want to take away the surprise, but I'm hearing that journalists are being flown into Redmond next week from around the world for briefings on OOXML. So, for their benefit, and yours, let's review where we are in the JTC1 process.

AS the Senate prepares to tinker with the nation’s patent laws this spring, it’s worth recalling the law of unintended consequences.

Recent articles, reports and documents show that there are still a lot of misperceptions regarding ODF in the market. Apparently, many people are still not well informed about ODF even though they choose to write about ODF. Therefore, I thought it can't hurt trying to dispel a couple of myths around ODF.