GPL 3.0: A bonfire of the vanities? | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Zuck makes some good points about the impending free software v.s open software split.

One of the big tensions in the open software movement has been that large numbers of people simply do not believe that the GPL says what it says it does or that RMS can possibly mean what he means.

Utill recently the only company that has really taken RMS seriously is Microsoft. Gates may well be wrong in stating that the GPL is a viral license. But enyone who has talked to RMS for any length of time on the subject knows that viral is exactly what he intended it to be.

The GPLv3 is really an attempt by RMS to set the open source movement straight on this point. In addition to making the viral nature clear RMS has taken the opportunity to take a pot shot at trustworthy computing.

I suspect that RMS has left it too late to trust the loyalty of his followers. The most likely outcome at this point is for most of the open source movement to get behind the Apache and Creative Commons licenses.