For Approval: GPLv3

[Luis Villa]

More useful archive URLs inline, and then a summary of previous
comments on OSD compliance below to re-start discussion about v3's OSD
compliance (and only the OSD compliance :)

On 8/6/07, Russ Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:
> See Chris DiBona's approval request here:

http://www.nabble.com/Submitting-GPLv3-and-LGPLv3-for-OSI-inclusion.-tf4001061.html

> with more discussion here:

http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=11916798&framed=y

> and here as well:

http://www.nabble.com/conducting-a-sane-and-efficient-GPLv3%2C-LGPLv3-Review-tf4197233.html

> Please discuss the GPLv3 here, to avoid further fragmentation:

Some comments from within the threads (all conclude in favor of
approval, but I can't find any serious commentary which concludes that
the license is not OSD compliant):

Matthew Flaschen did the only thorough section-by-section review that
I can find:
http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-Submitting-GPLv3-and-LGPLv3-for-OSI-inclusion.-p11367961.html

He concluded that it is compliant. If anyone wants to discuss actual
planks of the license, I recommend copying and pasting the relevant
portion of Matt's analysis into this thread and going from there.

Past that, the comments appear to mostly be either not about OSD
compliance, or strongly in favor:

Lawrence Rosen commented "GPLv3 is obviously OSD-compliant. Let's get
right to the point. It is an open source license, even if RMS prefers
to use a different name for it. :-)"

Rick Moen, in reply to that: "Indeed, I think what you say is
abundantly obvious, and doing anything else would merely waste
everyone's time." (both from
http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=11938684&framed=y )

Mark Radcliffe summarized the new license in his blog:
http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.blogspot.com/2007/07/general-public-license-version-3-legal.html

and said on-list that we should have a review, but that "I am
confident that it will pass the review." (from
http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=11918577&framed=y )

Jesse Hannah noted: "As far as I can tell, the only question between it and the
OSD would be over OSD number 9, and even that I don't think comes out
to be anything that would keep it from getting approved. That's just
at a glance, but personally I'm surprised it isn't approved already."
(from    http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=11937846&framed=y
)

Hope this summary is useful. As I said, it is so far overwhelmingly
positive (on the question of actual OSD compliance), but I can see
some possibility for reasonable discussion and disagreement raised by
Matthew's review. I would urge anyone who wants to discuss it in more
detail to read his post and reply to it here.

Luis

[Disclaimer: like Mark, I participated in the GPL drafting process, so
I am invested in it, but my own casual review suggests that the
license is OSD-compliant.]