Washington, DC – The third discussion draft of the General Public License version 3 (GPLv3) released by the Free Software Foundation today is designed to limit cooperation between the open source and proprietary software industry according to the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). In response to the newest discussion draft, ACT executive director Morgan Reed made the following = statement:

“The newest draft of the GPLv3 is clearly designed to build unscalable walls between open source and proprietary software. The rest of the world has decided to make software more interoperable, but Stallman and the FSF are focused on ideology rather than the practical concerns of = users.”

“It started with four simple freedoms, but the new GPL looks more like the US Tax Code. The new draft no longer just defines freedom; it is designed to punish companies and business models that Richard Stallman just doesn’t like. Novell, Microsoft, TiVo, Nokia, and Linux-based phone manufacturers are all in the crosshairs. In fact, the new version is now so complex and legally-squishy that it is essentially a full employment guarantee for intellectual property lawyers.”

“The most notable addition, the anti-Novell provision, prevents open source software distributors from giving their customers the certainty over intellectual property issues they want. The new provision is designed to prevent software patent holders from providing a partner’s customers with IP indemnification, by forcing them to indemnify all downstream users. This is essentially a poison pill for any such agreement in the future.”

“Linus Torvalds and the Linux leadership community have been vocal critics of previous versions of GPLv3, and there is nothing in this draft that should change that. Linux products have pioneered cooperation between proprietary companies and the open source community and their comments on this draft will be most telling.”

For More Information Contact:

Mark Blafkin

Vice President for Public Affairs

+1.202.331.2130 x104

mblafkin@ACTonline.org

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