"The Gnu General Public Licence (GPL) has been around in one form or another since the Gnu manifesto published by Richard Stallman in 1985. The free software movement founded at that time has not simply created the most successful copyright licence ever, it has acted as a guide to other, similar movements..."

For the second time in six months, a flamefest has broken out between those who release software under the BSD (Berkely Software Distribution) licence and others who release software under the General Public Licence.

The third revision of the General Public Licence has been out for just short of three weeks but plenty of people are already questioning why take-up has been so slow.

Now that the final version of the GNU General Public Licence version 3 has been released, the in-depth analysis of its implications can begin. Two of the first commentaries to be published have come from the legal world, and there are doubtless many more being prepared for purely internal use within software companies wondering whether to adopt the new licence.

A recent report, "GPLv2 vs. GPLv3: The two seminal open source licenses, their roots, consequences, and repercussions", compiled by Liz Laffan of VisonMobile, examines the new terms and differences introduced by the third version of the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) and assesses the probable impact it will have on the software market in general and the mobile industry in particular.

The GNU General Public Licence is falling in popularity, according to figures released by Black Duck that looked at all versions of the GPL as a whole.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI), one of the principal advocacy organisations on open source software, has unanimously approved the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) version 1.1 as an open source licence, on 4 March.

InformationWeek have responded to critcisms of misrepresentation with ...a straw man. This short piece points out how InformationWeek's continued rehashing of old material disproves their own claim of a "growing schism".

Sun Microsystems will release its xVM Ops Center virtualisation management application under the General Public Licence version 3 (GPLv3), the company revealed at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.