GNU General Public License to be revised

With a relatively hostile environment that has pitted proprietary software against open source as a backdrop, the Free Software Foundation, the steward of the GNU General Public License, is working on the first revamp to the license in 13 years. The GPL, the most widely used free-software license, was created by FSF founder Richard Stallman, who last updated it in 1991. The changes planned for the next release, Version 3, a draft of which is due next year, focus on several broad topics that reflect the dynamic change in the software industry since the early 1990s—intellectual property licensing and patent issues, the question of how to deal with software used over a network, and concerns around trusted computing. Also addressed will be the differences between the English-speaking countries' copyright law and that of Western Europe, said Eben Moglen, general counsel for the foundation, who is authoring the new license with Stallman. Read the full story on eWeek