From 23d356cbf627dd5c2a11a7958ff218cf9d93b9ea 2014-03-16 19:26:04
From: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@ebb.org>
Date: 2014-03-16 19:26:04
Subject: [PATCH] Wrote section on GPLv1.

---

diff --git a/gpl-lgpl.tex b/gpl-lgpl.tex
index fd244b0eafed554f86b0318e58b87297f83e57df..dec24f64fab1435ecc9541ee65fffe5901210401 100644
--- a/gpl-lgpl.tex
+++ b/gpl-lgpl.tex
@@ -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}