In part 4 of a 5 part series on the new version of the most commonly used free/open source license, today we take a look at one of the reasons it took so long to create–the Microsoft/Novell patent deal.

I still continue to find articles on the internet downplaying the seemingly normal and sweeping adoption and acceptance of the GPLv3 license. This should point out a few things that indicate that GPLv3 is "here to stay".

The GPL version 3 has been out for six weeks, and the debate about whether to adopt it remains heated.

Making separate but critical points about the path of the Linux kernel, the maintainer of the kernel on Monday stressed there is no need to worry about forking and not to expect a move to the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3

"For all that a great deal of attention was given to the arrival of the GPLv3 (Gnu General Public License, version 3), few software developers announced plans to move their programs to this new license. Now, open-source programmers are beginning to give the new license a try."

"Many open source projects have been licensed under GPLv2, and while the open source world at large is on-board with free software and the ideal of free distribution, it is less concerned with the FSF's social movement to provide software freedom to all users. Consequently, most new features of GPLv3 address issues geared first toward protecting the rights of end users."

The big news for today is definitely open source licensing, with SugarCRM going GPLv3, the OSI approving SocialText’s Common Public Attribution License, BMC selecting the BSD license for its open source projects, and the newly re-named xTuple introducing yet another license.