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The Year the GPL Went to War


From Eclipse to Linux, open source was tops in 2007

By Alex Handy
December 26, 2007 — 
For developers, the open source world of 2007 was all about updates and interesting new projects. From a new version of Eclipse to a new scheduler in Linux, developers around the world contributed their free time to make their lives and the lives of others collectively easier. But in hindsight, the significance of 2007 may well be that the GPL finally grew some teeth.

2007 marked the first time that the GPL saw any changes or revisions since the early 1990s. Specifically, the third GPL version was proposed, revised and released this year. And thus far, GPLv3 has had little to no effect on most developers. Perhaps this is due to the relatively limited changes in this new license: New paragraphs forbid the implementation of digital rights management using GPLed software, and additional sections help to sort out some of the mess software patents can cause.

GPL in Court
The GPL's new clothes seemed to give the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) a new passion for the older forms of the license. In the fall, the nonprofit law firm helped two open source developers begin a major legal campaign to defend their hitherto-obscure Unix toolkit, known as the BusyBox project. Those tools seem to get around in the embedded devices world, as BusyBox lawsuits have now been filed against four companies, including Verizon. This marks the first time the GPL has been directly asserted in an American court system, though no gavels had actually fallen as of this writing: SFLC obtained a settlement in the first of the four cases.

While the GPL has been in court in the past, this was the first time in the almost-20-year history of the license that the redistribution clause was at issue, instead of some legal vagary. If the trend continues, 2008 could see dozens of similar lawsuits, especially now that the SFLC has a win under its belt.

But for developers, open source is about code, not lawyers. And the code released into the wild during 2007 was used to do everything from chart business rules in massive SOA installations to sorting out the differences between Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox Web browsers. Perhaps these latter projects, such as Prototype.js and the Dojo toolkit, were the most important open source projects for developers. With so much hype still surrounding AJAX, these kits help to make Web development easier than it has been in years.

Java also deserves a tip of the hat here in the open source world, as that language began its great journey out of the heart of darkness in May. With Eclipse 3.3 offering the largest code update since its creation, the Java world is expanding exponentially into the hub of open source development its users have been hoping for since its creation.

And with companies such as BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle and Sun Microsystems contributing huge chunks of code to the Java community, and to the larger development world, we may all someday benefit from the time and cost savings open source claims to offer.


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