Open-Source GPL Rewrite on Fast Track?

NEW YORK—Seeking to relieve patent licensing worries by the open-source community, industry heavyweights here at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo said a revised version of the GPL could arrive sooner than many had expected.

At a LinuxWorld panel, Eben Moglen, the legal counsel for the Free Software Foundation, said that the first public draft of the GNU General Public License 3 will be available for comment shortly.

"It won't be long before the first public draft of the GPL 3 will be out, and it will include clauses on how to conduct patent defense," he said.

The GPL is the most widely used free software license.

Moglen estimated that 65 percent to 70 percent of all open-source projects were licensed under the GPL, which had its last major update in 1991.

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Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.