[en] Brazil to host the 2nd International Conference on GPLv3

[Beatriz Busaniche]

Porto Alegre, Brazil - April 21st & 22nd.

BOSTON - February 21, 2006 - The 2nd international GPLv3 conference will
take place on April 21st & 22nd in Porto Alegre, Brazil.  The
international GPLv3 conferences are part of a year-long public
consultation process to update GNU General Public License ("the GPL")
which today protects the freedom of 100s of millions of software users
and is the most used Free Software license in the world.

The conference will take place during the 7th International Free
Software Forum, which takes place from April 19th to the 22nd.

Like the current GPL, version 3 will work to guarantee that all users of
software distributed under its terms have the freedom to examine, share,
and modify that software.

Version 2 of the GPL was released in 1991.  It is now being updated to
account for changes in the legal and technical environment in which
software licenses operate, and to protect against new threats to the
freedoms of software users such as software patents and Digital
Restrictions Management (DRM).

The new version will also incorporate what has been learned over the
last 15 years about enforcing a single software license in varying legal
systems around the world, and with the 2nd international GPLv3
conference, the current draft of GPL version 3 will receive particular
scrutiny from lawyers and software users of Latin America.  A main goal
of these conferences is to get input from free software users in all
parts of the world.

The main changes in the text are those which would make GPLv3 compatible
with other Free Software licenses.  That is to say that programmers will
be able to combine GPLv3-covered code with code distributed under some
other Free Software licenses which version 2 would have prohibited.

We invite you join us at FISL for the second round of presentations and
discussions, with both international and Latin American perspectives.

Confirmed speakers include Richard Stallman, founder and president of
Free Software Foundation (FSF), who will introduce the new draft, and
Richard Fontana, lawyer at Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), who will
provide legal interpretation.  Expert panelists form across Latin
America will lead discussion on license internationalization, DRM,
software patents, and license compatibility.

The Conference's schedule and further information will be published soon
at
http://gplv3.fsf.org/wiki/index.php/International_conferences

About the Free Software Foundation

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.