Initial commit
corrected README.md

The README.md originally stated that the FSF's "meta-license" for the
GNU GPL text would also be the license for patches to GPL.next. I
later realized that this won't make sense for the typical patch.
Add final version of the GNU GPL version 3 as published by FSF
Initial draft

I deleted the Preamble of the GNU GPLv3. This was necessary because
the FSF has stated this as a requirement for permission to create
derivatives of the GNU GPL. I could write an alternative Preamble, but
for the moment I am inclined to think that GPL.next does not need
one.

The GNU GPL Preamble (in its various versions) is an inspiring and
important political statement and also functions a bit similarly to
the so-called "human-readable code" counterparts to Creative Commons
licenses in providing a basic summary description of the license (or
at any rate that is one intention behind the GNU GPL
Preamble). However, even if one thinks a license summary is valuable,
it may be better as a separate document (the Creative Commons
approach).

As for the political aspect of the Preamble, there is something
problematic about this in that it expresses the viewpoint of the FSF
and its sympathizers, but most likely does not quite speak for a
substantial number (perhaps the majority) of GPL licensors (and
licensees). Developers who disagree with the FSF on certain policy
issues (but who favor or potentially favor, strong copyleft) may find
a Preamble-less GPL less alienating.

The FSF also requires GNU GPL derivatives to reword the "How to Apply"
appendix and remove references to GNU, if the appendix is preserved at
all. I decided simply to delete it, particularly in view of the length
of the license document. Instructions on how to apply the license may
be useful but they need not be a part of the license document. Certain
interim public drafts of the GNU GPLv3 removed the appendix for this
reason, though it was later restored.

Section 13 of the GNU GPLv3 and a corresponding paragraph in section
13 of the GNU AGPLv3 provide for cross-compatibility of these two
licenses. I have replaced this section with a quickly-drafted sentence
that says that GPL.next can be relicensed under any version of the GNU
GPL or GNU AGPL (thus making it GNU GPL-compatible, which addresses
one of the FSF's stated concerns regarding GPL derivatives).

I substituted "License Steward" for the references to the FSF in
section 14, and (awkwardly, I later decided) declared myself to be the
License Steward "for the time being".
deleted copyright definition and entity transactions provision

In 2006 lawyers for Sun Microsystems suggested adding an explicit
definition of "copyright" that would encompass not just conventional
copyright law but also laws like the US Semiconductor Chip Protection
Act (which is something of a hybrid of copyright and patent law). The
application of the GNU GPLv3 to semiconductor integrated circuit
layouts proved to be an unimportant use case. No other
widely-encountered free software license attempts explicitly to apply
its provisions beyond copyright to such "copyright-like laws". In the
interest of brevity I have therefore deleted this definition.

I have deleted the middle paragraph of section 10, the "entity
transactions" provision. This originated in a provision drafted by
Eben Moglen as an alternative to a suggestion by Mark Radcliffe that
GPLv3 have an explicit assignability provision to address a concern
believed by some lawyers to arise in corporate acquisitions involving
GPL-licensed software assets. I am currently inclined to regard Mark's
concern as not being a real-world problem, and perhaps unnecessary
given the automatic licensing feature of the GPL but at any rate I
consider a simple conventional assignability provision preferable to
the existing entity transactions provision, which seems more complex
than necessary. It is not clear how the "right to possession of the
Corresponding Source" is to be enforced (it might be simpler to say
that an entity transaction is a form of conveying, and in fact I seem
to recall some interim GPLv3 draft language taking such an
approach). In any case, this is yet another provision that finds no
counterpart in other major free software licenses. In the interest of
greater brevity it should be deleted, but the issue of assignment in
the M&A context should perhaps be revisited at a later time.
restored original name of present-day sec. 12

What is now section 12 of GPLv3 (the successor to GPLv2 section 7)
bore the heading "Liberty or Death for the Program" in the initial
public draft of GPLv3. The heading was, I believe, devised by
RMS. This wonderful title was, I think, thought to be too
radical-sounding or something (perhaps a vendor or commercial user
raised such a concern early on during the GPLv3 drafting process), and
so the drafters changed it to "No Surrender of Others' Freedom". The
original heading is clearly superior. I have myself taken to calling
this provision the "liberty-or-death clause" and such terminology has
to some degree caught on with others.

In fairness, I recall that RMS also made the point that under this
provision the Program does not actually "die"; rather, particular
copies of it may become nondistributable. Thus the heading was never
truly accurate.  But the principal reason for this change was
lamentable primness.

I have therefore restored the original heading.
deleted obvious clarification of definition of licensee

This commit deletes the sentence, originating in some interim GPLv3
draft at the request of one (or possibly more than one) commercial
entity, clarifying that licensees can be individuals or
organizations. No other mainstream free software license, to my
knowledge, has seen the need to make this obvious point. Of course a
licensee can be organizational. Moreover, I have never encountered any
misconception in the real world to the effect that somehow GPL
licensees can only be natural persons. Indeed, any license that
prohibited organizations from being licensees would not be a free
software (or open source) license.
de-defined License Steward

This commit explicitly leaves "License Steward" undefined rather than
making it refer, with seeming and unintended egomaniacism, to Richard
Fontana.  Whether it is even necessary to use the "License Steward"
vehicle is something that should be revisited, but for now it is a
placeholder that replaces the stewardship role given to the FSF in the
GNU GPL.
deleted limited badgeware compatibility from sec. 7

This is a small but significant change and may deserve more expanded
explanation, but here's a quick one.

The GPL has a "UI legal notice" provision (often ignored by licensors
and licensees, the subject of some past controversy in some quarters,
and the basis of Bradley Kuhn's hack for the original AGPL to boot).

One of the late changes made to GPLv3 was a modification of section 7
to make GPL-compatible additional terms requiring preservation of
author attributions not just in source code but in the UI legal notice
displayed by the running program. This change was the result of
lobbying by Larry Augustin and John Roberts (the SugarCRM founder, not
the person who later became Chief Justice of the United States). Those
familiar with free software legal history will recall that around this
time there was considerable controversy over the so-called
"attribution licenses" in use by companies like SugarCRM and
Socialtext. These licenses, labeled "badgeware licenses" by their
critics, typically required the licensee to preserve a prominent
display of the logo of the original commercial licensor even where the
licensee had made modifications (and even in contexts where compliance
with such a requirement would not be possible).

The late change made to GPLv3, accompanied by a factored-out
definition of "Appropriate Legal Notices", was not intended to allow
badgeware as then practiced, but rather a lesser form of badgeware:
for example, preservation of a "powered by" logo (with a requirement
to link back to the original licensor's website), to the extent it was
a reasonable author attribution requirement, could be a
GPLv3-compatible condition, though the FSF never intended to authorize
licensors to limit discretion over how the licensee might opt to
comply with the Appropriate Legal Notices requirement, including any
permitted lesser badgeware requirement.

A number of companies took advantage of this feature of GPLv3 (and
AGPLv3). It is now clear that it was a policy error to authorize
limited badgeware. It is my impression that companies have tended to
abuse this feature, imposing requirements more restrictive than I
believe the FSF ever intended, and it is not even entirely clear that
the logo preservation requirements are truly reasonable author
attribution requirements.

The minimum change made here is to remove the explicit authorization
of additional requirements to preserve author attributions in
Appropriate Legal Notices.
deleted definition of License; removed regeneration clause from definition of Corresponding Source

This commit makes two small changes. First, the explicit definition of
"License" is deleted as *probably* unnecessary. In GPLv2 the general
understanding has been that "License" obviously means GPLv2. Now I
recall that adding an explicit definition of "License" in GPLv3 (which
I believe was my idea) did serve some purpose other than
hyperlegalism. I believe it may have been thought desirable to clarify
that in *any* version of the GNU GPL "this License" cannot mean "some
or all versions of the GNU GPL" except in the special case of the
"revised versions" provision. (As a concrete example, consider the
meaning of GPLv2 section 2 for a "GPLv2 only" program: if "this
License" could mean "any version of the GPL", it would frustrate the
expectations of the licensors of the GPLv2-only program that modified
versions be licensed only under GPLv2 and not GPLv3 or some other
version.) Perhaps this should be revisited, but there is essentially
no basis in real-world experience that justifies the specific fear
that would motivate this clarification.

Admittedly, the GNU GPL family is unusual as a copyleft license that
does not have a built-in "or later" clause, and perhaps this feature
or non-feature (clearly important to many GPL licensors of existing
projects, such as the Linux kernel) justifies the clarification about
what "this License" means. Nevertheless in five years of experience of
GPLv2 no one has attempted to argue that because "License" is
undefined in GPLv2 one can license out a modified version of a
GPLv2-only program under GPLv3. (The counterargument to that may be
that GPLv3 retroactively provides that clarification for GPLv2.)

The second change in this commit is deletion of the following
paragraph from the definition of Corresponding Source:

  The Corresponding Source need not include anything that users can
  regenerate automatically from other parts of the Corresponding
  Source.

This must have been added for a reason, but I do not believe there is
any record of it. I do not believe I was involved in discussing or
drafting it (it seems likely that it was triggered by a stet
comment). I'm sure there is some technical circumstance in which this
sentence will provide some marginally desirable clarification of the
limits of the Corresponding Source requirement but it is not obvious
to me what such a circumstance would be. The definition of
Corresponding Source is already complex enough. GPLv2 has gotten by
without this clarification. In my post-2007 experience of GPLv3 I have
never been aware of any issue triggering this clause. In the interest
of brevity and simplification I have decided to delete it. If someone
would like to explain what it is aimed at and why explicit inclusion
of the clause is more helpful than hurtful (in making the
Corresponding Source definition more complex) I'm all ears.
deleted separable-portion clause from section 6

This commit deletes from section 6 the following paragraph:

  A separable portion of the object code, whose source code is
  excluded from the Corresponding Source as a System Library, need not
  be included in conveying the object code work.

I do not recall the reason for inclusion of this clause, though it may
have been a response to a stet comment. It is a bit strange in that
(the first half of) section 6 is concerned with the requirement to
convey Corresponding Source triggered by the action of conveying an
object code version of a work, yet this clause reads like a
clarification of a requirement to convey the object code. Of course
there is no requirement to convey object code.

What I suppose this clause must be saying is that where the
distributor ordinarily would not be conveying the System Library with
its object code work, the fact that one is required to convey
Corresponding Source (modulo System Libraries) does not somehow then
imply a requirement to convey the object code System Library. I can't
see how anyone would reasonbly think this could possibly be a
requirement in a provision that says nothing otherwise about a
requirement to provide object code.
deleted last clause of sec. 1; unnecessary given deletion of entity transactions provision
simplified title of sec. 3
simplified "void" clause of sec. 8
greatly simplified acceptance provision
deleted unnecessary T&C delimiters
deleted MS coupon provision
modified final sentence of sec. 7
deleted section 17
fixed typo in title of sec. 13