created.  Like jazz, or novels, or architecture, the law gets built

upon the work that went before. This adding and changing is what

creativity always is.  And a free society is one that assures that its

most important resources remain free in just this sense.\footnote{This

quotation is Copyright \copyright{} 2002, Lawrence Lessig. It is

licensed under the terms of

\href{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/}{the ``Attribution

License'' version 1.0} or any later version as published by Creative

Commons.}

\end{quotation}

In essence, lawyers are paid to service the shared commons of legal

infrastructure.  Few citizens defend themselves in court or write their

own briefs (even though they are legally permitted to do so) because

everyone would prefer to have an expert do that job.

The Free Software economy is a market ripe for experts.  It

functions similarly to other well established professional fields like the

law. The GPL, in turn, serves as the legal scaffolding that permits the

creation of this vibrant commercial and noncommercial Free Software

economy.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\chapter{A Tale of Two Copyleft Licenses}

While determining the proper methodology and criteria to yield an accurate

count remains difficult, the GPL is generally considered one of the most

widely used Free Software licenses.  For most of its history --- for 16 years

from June 1991 to June 2007 --- there was really only one version of the GPL,

version 2.

However, the GPL had both earlier versions before version 2, and, more well

known, a revision to version 3. 

\section{Historical Motivations for the General Public License}

The earliest license to grant software freedom was likely the Berkeley

Software Distribution (``BSD'') license.  This license is typical of what are

often called lax, highly permissive licenses.  Not unlike software in the

public domain, these non-copyleft licenses (usually) grant software freedom

to users, but they do not go to any effort to uphold that software freedom

for users.  The so-called ``downstream'' (those who receive the software and

then build new things based on that software) can restrict the software and

distribute further.

The GNU's Not Unix (``GNU'') project, which Richard M.~Stallman (``RMS'')

founded in 1984 to make a complete Unix-compatible operating system

implementation that assured software freedom for all.  However, RMS saw that

distribution in the countries where such controls do not exist.

As far as is currently known, GPLv2~\S8 has never been formally used by any

copyright holders.  Some have used GPLv2~\S8 to explain various odd special

topics of distribution, but generally speaking, this section is not

particularly useful and was actually removed in GPLv3.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\chapter{Odds, Ends, and Absolutely No Warranty}

GPLv2~\S\S0--7 constitute the freedom-defending terms of the GPLv2.  The remainder

of the GPLv2 handles administrivia and issues concerning warranties and

liability.

\section{GPLv2~\S9: FSF as Stewards of GPL}

\label{GPLv2s9}

FSF reserves the exclusive right to publish future versions of the GPL\@;

GPLv2~\S9 expresses this.  While the stewardship of the copyrights on the body

of GPL'd software around the world is shared among thousands of

individuals and organizations, the license itself needs a single steward.

Forking of the code is often regrettable but basically innocuous.  Forking

of licensing is disastrous.

\section{GPLv2~\S10: Relicensing Permitted}

\label{GPLv2s10}

GPLv2~\S10 reminds the licensee of what is already implied by the nature of

copyright law. Namely, the copyright holder of a particular software

program has the prerogative to grant alternative agreements under separate

copyright licenses.

\section{GPLv2~\S11: No Warranty}

\label{GPLv2s11}

All warranty disclaimer language tends to be shouted in all capital

letters. Apparently, there was once a case where the disclaimer language

of an agreement was negated because it was not ``conspicuous'' to one of

the parties. Therefore, to make such language ``conspicuous,'' people

started placing it in bold or capitalizing the entire text. It now seems

to be voodoo tradition of warranty disclaimer writing.

Some have argued the GPL is unenforceable in some jurisdictions because

its disclaimer of warranties is impermissibly broad. However, GPLv2~\S11

contains a jurisdictional savings provision, which states that it is to be

interpreted only as broadly as allowed by applicable law. Such a

provision ensures that both it, and the entire GPL, is enforceable in any