CSC 379:Week 2, Group 2

GNU General Public License

Overview

"The GNU General Public License is often called the GNU GPL for short; it is used by most GNU programs, and by more than half of all free software packages." from the GNU web site

The GPL was created by Richard Stallman who created the GNU project and a leader in the free software movement.

Discussion Questions

• What is the impact of GPL use?
  • A developer that wishes to release thier code free and open source can do so and not worry about future changes of their code ending up in none free propriety software by releasing their code under the GLP. Others can modify and change software to meet their needs, but any thing that is derived from GPL code must again be released under the GPL.
  • If a developer wishes to use some code from a GPL project in one of thier own, they can not unless the new project will be liscened under the GPL. Some have criticized the GPL in acting like a virus as it gets attached to antying that uses GPL code. A View as to why GPL should not be used
  • GPL and other open source code licenses allows for many more developers to look and and find bugs and make improvements to software Then in proprietary software.
    • The many different distributions of linux is the most popular GPL example
    • Fire fox and Open Officer are releasesd under the LGPL or Lesser General Public License
• What are the ethical considerations for licenses like GPL that require their adoption if work licensed under it is incorporated into a parent work, with additional stipulations that include the acceptance of the most current version of the GPL license?

An Examination of a Recent Related Event: The Microsoft/Novell partnership

Recently Microsoft partnered with their rival Novell, the makers of Suse Linux, in an effort to optimize virtualization for each other's operating systems, among other promised features. Since Suse Linux is covered under the GNU General Public License, this raised some unique concerns. GNU licenses cover only free programs but with this new agreement Microsoft will be paying a royalty to distribute Suse Linux Enterprise. Even though legally this agreement is valid, many developers who have contributed their work to Suse over the years with the understanding that it would be covered under the GNU feel betrayed by this and consider it a breach of the agreement.

Another ethical dilemma arises when one considers that the GPL agreement included patent protection for Novell customers only if Microsoft's intellectual property was discovered in Linux. However, Novell has not yet officially acknowledged that Linux infringes on Microsoft's patents.

Some argue that an agreement to make operating systems better optimized for one another as the demand for servers to run multiple operating systems increases can only be beneficial to customers, companies and the development community as a whole.

You can read more about the announcement, reactions and criticism at these external links:

• GNU Agreement which covers all of Suse Linux
• The Announcement
• Reaction from some GNU Software Developers