Moglen speaks on re-writing the GPL

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Feb. 02, 2005

Eben Moglen spoke at the OSDL Summit yesterday about efforts to re-write the LGPL and GPL licenses. Moglen is head of the newly formed SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center), which is working toward shipping "GPL v3" after a year or more of work.

According to eWEEK's Peter Galli, who attended the speech, Moglen and the SFLC will work on the LGPL first. The LGPL, or "lesser" General Public License," is often mistakenly called the "library" GPL, since it is mainly used for shared libraries.

Any changes to the GPL will have to pass muster with the license's creator (and copyright owner), Richard Stallman. Stallman last revised the GPL in 1991, according to Galli.

The "current" version of the GPL is version 2.2, although Linux and many other open source software programs still use the even older 2.0 version. Whether Linus and other Linux copyright holders would ever agree to a license change is unknown, although Torvalds for one has complained about the verbosity of the GPL. Torvalds has also said that proposed changes to the GPL could waste developers' time, but that he believes a changed license "is possible," and might be better than the alternative.

According to Galli, Moglen's talk at the OSDL Summit focused on the "why's" of the change, which include changes to the way software is developed since the license was written, such as the emergence of web services technology. Moglen also said the license should be easier to translate. He said repeatedly how difficult the process will be, and how, in the end, the length of the license would change no more than 10 percent.

Find out more about Moglen's speech by reading the full story at eWEEK.

Rewriting GPL No Easy Task

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