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Bradley Kuhn (bkuhn) - 10 years ago 2014-03-16 19:26:04
bkuhn@ebb.org
Wrote section on GPLv1.
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gpl-lgpl.tex
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@@ -763,6 +763,40 @@ issues discussed earlier in \S~\ref{software-and-non-copyright}.
 

	
 
\section{The GNU General Public License, Version 1}
 

	
 
In January 1989, the FSF announced that the GPL had been converted into a
 
``subroutine'' that could be reused not just for all FSF-copyrighted
 
programs, but also by anyone else.  As the FSF claimed in its announcement of
 
the GPLv1\footnote{The announcement of GPLv1 was published in the
 
  \href{http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull6.html#SEC8}{GNU's Bulletin, vol. 1
 
    no. 6, January, 1989}.  Thanks very much to Andy Tai for his
 
  \href{http://www.free-soft.org/gpl_history/}{consolidation of research on
 
    the history of the pre-v1 GPL's.}:
 
\begin{quotation}
 
To make it easier to copyleft programs, we have been improving on the
 
legalbol architecture of the General Public License to produce a new version
 
that serves as a general-purpose subroutine: it can apply to any program
 
without modification, no matter who is publishing it.
 
\end{quotation}
 

	
 
This, like many inventive ideas, seems somewhat obvious in retrospect.  But,
 
the FSF had some bright people and access to good lawyers when it started.
 
It took almost five years from the first copyleft licenses to get to a
 
generalized, reusable GPLv1.  In the context and mindset of the 1980s, this
 
is not surprising.  The idea of reusable licensing infrastructure was not
 
only uncommon, it was virtually nonexistent!  Even the early BSD licenses
 
were simply copied and rewritten slightly for each new use\footnote{It
 
  remains an interesting accident of history that the early BSD problematic
 
  ``advertising clause'' (discussion of which is somewhat beyond the scope of
 
  this tutorial) lives on into current day, simply because while the
 
  University of California at Berkeley gave unilateral permission to remove
 
  the clause from \textit{its} copyrighted works, others who adapted the BSD
 
  license with their own names in place of UC-Berkeley's never have.}.  The
 
GPLv1's innovation of reuable licensing infrastructure, an obvious fact
 
today, was indeed a novel invention for its day\footnote{We're all just
 
  grateful that the FSF also opposes business method patents, since the FSF's
 
  patent on a ``method for reusable licensing infrastructure'' would have
 
  not expired until 2006!}.
 

	
 
\section{The GNU General Public License, Version 2}
 

	
 
\section{The GNU General Public License, Version 3}
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