Eben Moglen's "The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3"

From the introduction at James Eaton-Lee's transcription of Moglen's speech:

On the 26th June 2007, Eben Moglen gave a talk on "The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3" hosted by the Scottish Society of Computers and Law, at the Edinburgh University School of Law. This was a highly interesting talk, and particularly topical, since the official release date for GPLv3 was just 3 days later, on Friday the 29th of June 2007.

-- http://jeremiad.org/moglen.shtml

I read the transcription on Groklaw, but there's also one on James Eaton-Lee's site (linked above) and one that's harder to read on the Internet Archive. There's also a video if you have the bandwidth.

Please take the opportunity to read it; Moglen's speech covers much more than merely the GPLv3 and the software industry, but also the changing world we live in.

GPLv3 released

And, it's done. Version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) has been released.

Free Software and Forking

Just a couple of essays on forking and Free software.

The first is the Right to Fork, and why it is important in the Free software community.

The second is the Fear of Forking, or Why Linux Won't Fork.

As an extra bonus, I'll also point you to "Corrupted Downloads: What is to be done?" in case you have problems downloading things with IE, and Make Your Open-Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else., in case you're trying to decide on a license to use (or just in general. It includes a nice appendix on the XFree86/xorg split), and finally, the GPL is a License, not a Contract.

Terry Hancock on Why Free Software is Important

In a recent blog post at Free Software Magazine, Terry Hancock explains (some reasons) why free software is important, and why we should spend our time promoting it and working on it, even though there are "bigger problems to worry about" in the world.

I would still point out that there are many other things that one could do, including protests (among others), although some are not terribly effective. Nevertheless, long-term planning and creating stable, ethical and expandable communities and methods for the future to build on is certainly worthwhile.