GPLv3 Set to Release Friday

The Free Software Foundation will release GPLv3 at 9am Pacific on Friday, the group said this week. The event will include a live stream of the announcement via the groups website, and marks the end of a contentious 18-month process that included four drafts, and very public disagreements over its contents.

Chief among the changes are policies that would prevent future patent agreements like the one struck between Novell and Microsoft, which many in the open-source community have taken issue with. "With the release of GPLv3, we will see new defenses extended to free software," FSF executive director Peter Brown wrote in an e-mail. "These defenses will continue the long history of fighting all efforts to make free software proprietary." The newest version of the GPL is the first in 16 years.