Free Software's Anti-Steve

We now know what happens when big hairy software coders work with big hairy lawyers. The result, understandably, is anything but slick. Meet GPLv3, the free software movement's latest legal tool to keep their code from being fenced in.

At least its author, Richard Stallman, has pluck. The coder and richly bearded patron saint of free software is launching this wad of legal jargon Friday — with practically every geek on the planet fixated on the retail debut of the iPhone — looking to steal a bit of Apple Chief Steve Jobs' hype.

The angle: iPhone users won't be free to mess around with all the $500 phone's code, Stallman's Free Software Foundation asserts, while their latest bit of legal mumbo jumbo will give users the ability to tinker with their gadgets freely. Hey, if the circus is in town, you might as well catch a ride in the clown car.

But while it may sound arcane, the latest version of the General Public License (GPL) is important. And not just because it complicates the efforts of Microsoft to get its hooks into so-called open-source software, as some geeks call it.

An earlier version of the license, GPLv2, has long protected the open-source Linux operating system, which has ground out gains against Unix and Windows in the server rooms of big businesses across the world. That license dictates that the software it protects can be copied and distributed freely, with the puckish twist that all derivative work must also be sold and licensed under the same terms.

The new license aims to push that idea further — even as the movement has won deep-pocketed believers, such as IBM , in the more than 15 years since the earlier license was published. As a result, the draft of the license released May 31 is a dense piece of legalese that, at times, seems torn between pushing the ideals of the revolution, and making "tactical" compromises.

For starters, the draft would discourage deals such as the one between Novell and Microsoft last year. As part of that arrangement, Microsoft will offer users of Novell software protection from being sued for violations of its patents in their Linux software. That angered many in the free software community, who asserted it created doubts about the legal viability of their software. Yet, in something of a messy compromise, the new license also effectively grandfathers in the Novell-Microsoft deal itself.

The new rules would also restrict something Stallman calls “Tivoization,” a term for devices that are built with free software, but don't allow users to mess around with all of the code, such as the TiVo digital video recorder. It's a controversial move — while Stallman's group sees the trend as a problem, others see the use of code that can be freely shared by companies such as TiVo as a sign of progress.

Partly as a result, Stallman has failed to win over some of the geeks who have made free software a success. Linux creator Linus Torvalds has criticized drafts of the new license, and there's no guarantee that he'll push for his creation to be covered by the new rules. Clearly, Stallman lacks Steve Jobs' reality distortion field.

But while Stallman lacks a talent for hype, he does have persistence on his side, and the kind of credibility that comes with being a true believer. In an effort to strengthen its free software credentials, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz has hinted that it may release its Solaris operating system under the GPLv3 license. And that's prompted Linux creator Torvalds to hint on a popular open-source mailing list that he may follow suit.

It's a bit of social engineering that's hardly on par with a Steve Jobs keynote. But for a hairy software coder, it's pretty slick.