The GNU General Public License (or GPL), the most widely used free software license, is being revised. Version 3 is imminent and there is much heated discussion because this license is a kind of constitution for the free software movement. This is a big deal for the free software community. Discussion and criticism are actively encouraged and are taken seriously by the reviewing groups whose job it is to digest the input from the public into more manageable chunks and then take these summaries to the people that write the language of the license.

Leo Laporte and Chris di Bona interviewed Eben Moglen, chief counsel for the Free Software Foundation, about the GNU GPL version 3.

Once again, Prof. Moglen steals the show, but part of his response is quite important if you want to understand why he doesn’t respond to individual critique of the GPLv3: those with access to the press would overrun others who only have access to a web browser and access to the aforementioned GPLv3 discussion website. This is critical for moderators to understand, lest they become a participant in the discussion rather than trying to understand sometimes diverging points of view.

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