BoingBoing.com is reporting that NASA will make history next month when it launches three Space Technology (ST5) satellites into orbit on board a Pegasus XL rocket. It is not the launch itself that is noteworthy, but rather a relatively small, but very important component of the satellites: their antennas. Not much bigger than a quarter and looking a lot like a randomly bent paper clip, the ST5's antenna are actually the result of 80 computers running a "survival of the fittest" evolutionary […]

In a post to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) last week, Linus Torvalds plainly stated that the Linux kernel would not be moving to the third revision of the General Public License (GPL). The reasons given in his post included the the requirement that developers publish their private keys and the amount of effort it would take to track down every kernel contributor to gain their permission to update the license of their code. Interestingly, he did not initially comment on the new, […]

Earlier this week, I wrote that ZDNet UK had recently spoken with Alan Cox about his opinion of the third revision of the General Public License (GPL). The original CNET News.com article was a little light on content, offering a few quotes from Cox but not much else. Today CNET News.com has published the full interview which took place last week after a Cox speech at the Trusted Computing conference in London. In addition to GPLv3 the interview covers OSS, DRM, software patents, and […]

After Linus Torvald's outright rejection of the third revision of the General Public License (GPL) last week, it appears that Alan Cox, the Linux kernel's unofficial number two man, remains open-minded, sticking by his wait-and-see approach to the revision which will be open to public discussion for most of 2006. Cox spoke recently with ZDNet UK, and his comments to them are similar to those he made in the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) thread that brought Linus's misgivings about the new version to […]

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) released the first draft of the General Public License (GPL) version 3 on Monday at the First International Conference on GPLv3, a two day conference held at MIT. As expected, the draft addresses patent litigation protection and digital rights management (DRM) systems among other issues. The new version, when finally adopted, will be the first major revision of the widely popular software license in the more than fifteen years since version 2 was adopted in 1991. […]

The first major overhaul of the General Public License (GPL) in almost 15 years is set to be released to the public by the Free Software Foundation at the First International Conference on GPLv3 at MIT on January 16th. Monday's draft, which will begin the public debate about the wording of version 3, is just the first of 2-3 "discussion drafts" planned for this year leading up to the final revision. The official version is scheduled to be completed one year to the day […]