To understand the motivation for the creation of GPL3 (General Public License), it is beneficial to take a look back at the computing atmosphere when GPL2 was first released. The year was 1991, Microsoft Windows had only been around for about half a decade, companies such as Amazon were no more than book stores and the thought of profiting off software and open-source tools was in its infancy. Therefore, the ideas of Torvald, Stallman, and GNU in an industry setting were also young.

GPL2 was the second iteration of the license with some of the first relaxations of rules meant to further the freedoms of the software space. The first brought the ability to lay claim to a developer’s work but not without fault. How the license was written made it so if a library was licensed under it, it could not be used in conjunction with other libraries. Specifically, with the c library, this brought about issues - as it prevented the use of a widely used language in many projects - and so came along GPL2. GPL2 permitted the using of the GPL license with other more restrictive licenses.

For a period, the GPL2 license reigned as an industry tool for the industry - that is till the TiVo instance. Known as Tivoization, there began to be a problem with how GPL2 was written. That is, as it stood, it would permit companies to practice the “bricking” of equipment if any of the source code was changed. This ran converse to the freedoms championed by the Free Software Foundation(FSF). While perhaps not the most ethical, it was not wrong. The concept of Tivoization brought about internal strife within the community. Linus Torvalds chastised the FSF: “It’s offensive because Tivo never did anything wrong, and the FSF even acknowledged that.” Despite doing wrong, the GPL license went through, again, another iteration.

While TiVo stands as one example, it is not alone. There are a plethora of examples that show how the GPL2 license was leveraged to exploit the loopholes of the second iteration. In the GPL3, however, many changes aimed to prevent the further exploitation of the license. This raised many issues in terms of the understanding of the freedoms as they stand now. Further, Linus Torvalds again points out who is the FSF to define the freedoms.

While this may have been less than a legal review of the licensing of software, its goal was to provide just a little more context for the consideration of the selection of licensing.