● 12.09.07

●● Quick Mention: The FSF’s Software Patents Coalition, Introduction to AGPLv3

Posted in FSF, GPL, Patents at 7:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The Free Software Foundation is taking steps to address issues associated with software patents in the United States.

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Our primary goal in this campaign is to reverse the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decision of ‘In re Alappat’. Here, I will explain the history of what that ruling meant, and why that same history has shown us that it should be the focus of our campaign.

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Brett Smith has released some explanatory notes about the GNU Affero GPLv3. He released a similar quick guide about a month ago — one that addresses the GNU GPLv3, which is probably bound to become the most widely used software licence (inheriting GPLv2′s place).

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Third, AGPLv3′s new requirement degrades gracefully. If you use AGPLv3-covered code in a program that doesn’t interact with users over a network, there are no additional obligations for you to meet. You can share and modify the program under the same conditions that apply to GPLv3-covered software.

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