Backed up from a local Blogger export (114123254239020009/114123254239020009.html) on 2026-01-01.

Richard stallman gave a talk on GPLv3on February 25th. There is a summary rationale document.

Interop with Digital Ristrictions Management Using the GPL you must provide a way for a user to sign their own binaries to run on their machine. The license will ensure that if you get the source you can actually build it and run it on your machine.

Conferred Patent Licenses Anytime you release something as GPL you are also giving whoever uses that code a license to use your patent. If you don’t tell someone that it uses a patented idea that you know about you are responsible. The end user is now specifically indemnified from damage. Think SCO suing end users because of supposed patent infringement.

License Compatibility Certain additional requirements are allowed that require citation of original author(s) credit as well as preventing the use of a company name to sell their derived product.

Overall I think these changes are good and fit with the original spirit of the GPL.

These was also a good presentation that RMS did on software patents for the CCC.