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The most important licence for free and open source software, the GPL underpins nearly three quarters of free software programs.

The first draft up for discussion will be presented at the International Public Conference for GPL v3 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on 16 and 17 January 2006. This will be followed by a period of response and redrafting from the community to create a second draft in the summer and a final draft in the autumn. The finished GPL v3 is scheduled to appear in the spring of 2007.

'The guiding principle for developing the GPL is to defend the freedom of all users,' said Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation. 'As we address the issues raised by the community, we will do so in terms of the four basic freedoms software users are entitled to - to study, copy, modify and redistribute the software they use. GPL v3 will be designed to protect those freedoms under current technical and social conditions and will address new forms of use and current global requirements for commercial and non-commercial users.'

As a staunch opponent of software patents, it will be interesting to see how Stallman shapes any new version of the GPL to accomodate the various initiatives to allow open source projects to make use of patents, as well as patents acquired by the Open Innovation Network specifically for open source use.

And on the other side of the fence, free and open source software has a very different community than it did 15 years ago at the last revision. And with tech heavyweights such as HP and Novell involved, issues such as how comfortably the GPL v3 sits with non-free software will be a hot topic.

'This is an extremely important event that will have a huge impact on the future of free software, and I'm delighted that the FSF has chosen to follow such an open process and consult so widely,' said Gary Barnett, IT research director at Ovum. 'Because this process is both inclusive and public, the FSF is ensuring that the views of everyone with an interest in the future of the GPL can participate in defining the next generation of the license.'

More information is available at http://gplv3.fsf.org.