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Re: [News] GPLv3 Draft Ready in 3 Days, Addresses Novell-type Deals

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Next GPL3 Draft to be Released on Wednesday
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| At the FSF general meeting today, Richard Stallman announced that the
>| third discussion draft of GPL version 3 will be released on
>| Wednesday and will be open for public comment. 
> `----
> 
> http://technocrat.net/d/2007/3/24/16783/
> 
> Moglen's Speech on The World After GPL3
> 
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| In his speech at the FSF general meeting, Moglen said that the
>| patent offensive that Microsoft started with the Novell-Microsoft 
>| agreement was only the onset of a long intended campaign, and will
>| continue. He feels that new provisions in GPL3 will be one essential
>| component of fighting that campaign, but not the only essential
>| component. He expects attacks and counter-attacks.
> `----
> 
> http://technocrat.net/d/2007/3/24/16784/

I have to agree with him - this is going to be a long and hard battle.
It warrants some analysis to consider who the players are, but here is
some off-the-cuff thinking, in no particular order:

1. FSF
2. Groklaw 
3. MPAA/RIAA/BPI etc
4. Television studios (Fox, Sony)
5. Microsoft (with Novell)
6. EC (Council, parliament, patent office & competition commission)
7. USPTO
8. HMG (Patent Office, quangos like MMC, Becta, Dfes...)
9. BBC
10. Google
11. Ubuntu
12. Red Hat
13. Debian Project Team
14. Linux Foundation (incl ex OSDL)
15. Nokia
16. Digium (Asterisk)
17. Nortel
18. Alcatel-Lucent
19. Ericsson
20. Dell
21. Hewlett Packard
22. Sun
...

Any other thinking on this?  This is going to be the biggest game ever
played with respect to understanding the nature of property and
ownership as we head into the truly networked world.  The internet as we
know it today, just like the telecoms network it grew and thrived
within, are just the beginning of what our truly networked world is
going to look like.

What do Arts and Sciences look like in a networked world?  How does
education work?  What function to countries and regions take?  To whom
do we pay taxes, and why?  What form does capitalism take as we know it
now?  How do we work the traditional commodity requirements such as iron
ore, steel, fuel (coal, oil, sun, wave, wind)?  

We're at a societal tipping point of enormous magnitude, and yet we have
a planet which is in the terminal grip of global warming, a population
which is mostly living in squalor, poverty and disease, with little or
no hope of emerging from it.  The OLPC project is the only thing I've
seen which makes a realistic stab at complementing the work of major
charities (like Oxfam, etc.) on sustainable infrastructure projects with
sustainable access to the world's greatest knowledge resource, the
internet.

If GPL3 is successful in its intention, then we stand a possibility of
networking the world in an affordable way, of educating the citizens of
poverty-stricken countries, helping them step up from their humble
existence, of educating enough of North America so that Global Warming
can be addressed by all the world's rich countries.  

... and getting a decent linux distro :-)

-- 
| Mark Kent   --   mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk          |
| Cola faq:  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/   |
| Cola trolls:  http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/                        |

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