A draft of third version of the free software license that made the GNU/Linux operating system possible, along with thousands of other programs — has been released. The GNU General Public License (GPL) hasn't been updated in fifteen years, and in that time, new technologies have evolved that make it possible to make technologies that technically comply with the (old) GPL without actually giving users the freedoms the GPL is meant to safeguard.
For example, the GPL doesn't require you to share your changes if you don't distribute the software you've improved upon, but that means that web-services creators can take GPLed programs, improve on them, and (since they don't distribute the software), be free from the burden to give back their changes to the community that wrote the software to begin with. Likewise, DRM technologies can be used to prevent you from running code if you modify it, which means that companies can distribute "open" code that is just as locked down as closed code, again betraying the philosophy behind the license.
The release of the version 3 draft marks the beginning of a year-long consultation process on how to fine-tune the GPL to last another 15 years.
The core legal mechanism of the GNU GPL is that of copyleft, which requires modified versions of GPL'd software to be GPL'd themselves. Copyleft is essential for preventing the enclosure of the free software commons, today as it was in 1991. But today's environment is more complex and diverse; thus, a fully effective copyleft calls for additional legal measures. Devising these measures is complicated by another aspect of our success: the worldwide adoption of free software principles. We hope and expect that contributors to GPLv3 will come from all over the globe, and from every developer, distributor, and user constituency.
