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The third version of the GNU General Public License version 3, released last summer, is on the slow road to acceptance. The new licensing conditions usher in numerous changes in how open source software developers regulate what users of their freely distributed programming code are legally able and ...

"Free software" is a term that's often used interchangeably with "open source," and often understood simply to mean software that is obtained without charge. However, the idea of free software is neither about openness nor about price; it is a matter of freedom, and its implications extend into the ...

Despite a press release by the defendant indicating its desire for a quick settlement, the licensing beef between BusyBox and Monsoon Multimedia is in fact still alive and well. No agreement has yet been reached, said Daniel B. Ravicher, the attorney who is prosecuting the Software Freedom Law Cente...

In what promises to be a precedent-setting case, the Software Freedom Law Center announced Thursday that it has filed the first ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GNU General Public License. The case was filed on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox against...

While the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public Licenses are used in nearly three-quarters of all free and open source software, GPL-based licenses not the only game in town. There are dozens of free and open source-focused software licenses, and while most aren't used -- or aren't even usef...

The free software movement's most important license -- version three of the GNU General Public License was unveiled by the Free Software Foundation late last month. It comes roughly 16 years after its wildly successful predecessor, GPLv2, became one of the most used software licenses ever. Today, ap...

Microsoft has issued a statement about its position in regard to the Free Software Foundation's version 3 of the GNU General Public License, which was crafted in part to protect users from possible Microsoft patent infringement lawsuits. Microsoft's stance? The company, in four paragraphs of text, e...

After an unprecedented development process that brought four drafts in eighteen months, the Free Software Foundation has released the third version of the GNU General Public License, the world's most popular free software license. "Since we founded the free software movement over 23 years ago, the f...

The Free Software Foundation has released the "last call" draft of version 3 of the GNU General Public License. The near-final draft simultaneously paves for the way for the controversial Microsoft-Novell Suse Linux distribution pact while at the same time inhibits similar deals from occurring again...

Sun Microsystems is considering the possibility of releasing OpenSolaris, the open source version of its Solaris operating system, under the latest version of the GNU GPL, the primary free software license. Up to now, OpenSolaris has been offered only under the Common Development and Distribution Li...

Open source software provider OpenLogic last week announced the results of a survey focusing on the most recent draft of the GPLv3. The survey results indicate that OpenLogic Expert Community members are positive toward the most recent GPLv3 draft. Seventy-one percent of respondents who currently us...

Sun's inability to allow for sufficiently open and inclusive governance over Java caused the eclipse of the Java tools and IDE action, which is now leading to an even larger purview for Eclipse at the ultimate expense of Java's future role. Buying NetBeans did not counter or blunt the Eclipse IDE fr...

Sun Microsystems, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, announced it would open source its online game server platform, called "Project Darkstar," which is written entirely in Java technology. The source code for Project Darkstar will become available under a general public l...

Red Hat and Exadel announced a partnership on Monday that will bring Eclipse-based developer tools to Red Hat's JBoss suite of middleware. The tools, which are geared toward developing service-oriented architecture and Web 2.0 applications, will be made available as open source under the auspices of...

Remember when AOL thought it was doing the world's researchers a big favor and made a boatload of online user behavior data openly available? Remember the unintended consequences? It became fairly easy to link up user preference data with some actual identifiable users. Users were upset, AOL looked ...