As a fresh software engineer, I had always wished if we could do away with software licensing altogether. It was one way for me, as a software programmer, to avoid knowing and understanding the legal binding. The programming language is a lot better than the legal one any given day! [Continue]
If you have been looking for a guide to check compliance with GPL, it has arrived. Legal language sure is tedious to read through and understand, so this guide can be really helpful. However I felt its own language is not any better! [Continue]
Trolltech has adopted GPLv3 for cross-platform open source application development toolkit Qt. It is important to note that this is an addition to its availability under GPLv2, meaning it will be available under both licenses. This indicates that even KDE might go GPLv3 in its further releases. [Continue]
The Free Software Foundation has released the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3). Now if you build a web service using a AGPLv3 licensed software then you have to make your source code available, including your contribution to the code. Earlier, this restriction applied only to the ones who distributed the software. [Continue]
GPL v3 and LGPL v3 have been approved by the OSI board. GPL has been one of the most popular open source licenses, though it has been equally prone to debates and controversies. GPL v3 was opened to an unwelcome debate, including many strong foot holders in open source. [Continue]
General Public License (GPL) version 3 is published by FSF after 18 months of work and equal amount of discussions and debates. The makers say it is not very different from the earlier version, which gained a lot of popularity. GPLv3 is an adaptation to new requirements and new events that happened in the open source space. [Continue]
I am averse to legal language, and naturally to licenses. Even at my best I can manage to consume two or three words in an hour or so. Jeff Atwood has done a good deed by presenting them for humans. [Continue]
Sun has open sourced Java under the GPL. What this means is that now the source code will be available for modifications, repackaging and redistribution, but maybe under a different name. The community had been demanding this for long, in fact alternate open source implementations have already begun. [Continue]