[en] Announcing the GPL Version 3 Development and Publicity Project (GPLv3)

[Fernanda G Weiden]

Stichting NLnet donate 150,000 EUR to support GPLv3 activities

The Free Software Foundations are proud to announce the creation of
the global "GPL Version 3 Development and Publicity Project".

The project will bring together thousands of organisations, software
developers, and software users from around the globe during 2006, in
an effort to update the world's most popular Free Software licence. The
GPLv3 promises to be one of the largest participatory comments and
adoption efforts ever undertaken.

The sister organisations in the United States and Europe are also
happy to announce a total grant of 150,000 EUR from Stichting NLnet to
support this truly-unique project.

The global process will be overseen by the Free Software Foundation
with support from its legal counsel the Software Freedom Law Centre
(SFLC). Free Software Foundation Europe will be coordinating the
European activities closely with both organisations and contributing
to the global communication effort.

Peter Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation says,
"With the release of GPLv3, we aim to increase the international reach
of the Free Software movement." To develop this new licence, we
will be contacting communities across the globe to ensure their
participation in the update of one of the most important social
documents of our time."

Georg Greve, President of FSF Europe adds, "We are working closely
with our sister organisation and the SFLC to make sure GPLv3 will
address the overarching and national European issues," and "Europe has
a vibrant ecosystem of highly-skilled Free Software developers and
small- and medium-sized Free Software enterprises. It will be our goal
to strengthen this development and help European governments to build
upon it."

In announcing the grant to the FSF and FSF Europe, Teus Hagen, chairman
of NLnet said, "NLnet's support of the GPL and the Free Software
movement, and its desire to see the successful adoption of GPLv3
achieved in the spirit of internationalization, made the funding of
this project an important priority for us." Hagen said, "We hope to
encourage other grant-making organisations to help fund this unique
project".

Written by Richard M. Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project and
Free Software Foundation, the GNU General Public Licence (``the GPL'')
is the Constitution and central licence of the Free Software movement,
securing users' rights to freely study, copy, modify, reuse, share and
redistribute software.

The GPL builds upon the ethical and scientific principle of free, open
and collaborative improvement of human knowledge, which was central to
the rapid evolution of areas like mathematics, physics, or biology,
and adapts it to the area of information technology.

By now, the GPL is employed by tens of thousands of software projects,
companies and governments around the world, and is supported by large
communities of software developers and users who wish to share their
work for the benefit of all.

The GNU system, the Linux kernel, Samba, MySQL, and many thousands of
other GPL'd programs, offer high technological quality as well as
political and economic independence and sustainability. GPL'd software
runs on or is embedded in devices ranging from mobile phones, PDAs and
home networking appliances to mainframes and supercomputing
clusters. Independent software developers around the world, as well as
every large corporate IT buyer and seller, and a surprisingly large
proportion of individual users, interact with the GPL.

The current version of the licence, which was written in 1991 and is
now 14 years old, has become central to the activities and operation
of a large part of all companies and governments and is now in need of
review.

Stichting NLnet, a non-profit foundation based in The Netherlands, has
a mission to stimulate network research and development in the domain
of Internet technology.  It develops and releases software under the
GPL. http://www.nlnet.nl/

For details of the project, please refer to http://www.fsf.org or
contact info at fsf.org; European activities will also be presented at
http://fsfeurope.org, or via contact to team at fsfeurope.org.


About the Free Software Foundations:

 The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), founded 2001, is a
 charitable non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of
 Free Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may
 participate in a digital society. The the Freedoms to use, copy,
 modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software
 definition - allow equal participation in the information
 age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software
 politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting
 development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. Further
 information about FSFE's work can be found at http://fsfeurope.org,
 get active yourself at http://fsfeurope.org/contribute/.

 The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to
 promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and
 redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and
 use of free (as in freedom) software - particularly the GNU operating
 system and its GNU/Linux variants - and free documentation for free
 software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and
 political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their Web site,
 located at www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about
 GNU/Linux. Donations to support their work can be made at
 http://donate.fsf.org. Their headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

 Free Software Foundations currently exist in the United States,
 Europe, India and Latin America. All FSFs form a network of sister
 organisations.