The Future of GPLv3 Hangs In the Balance

New submitter jms00 writes: A years-long legal battle has quietly escalated into what could become the defining moment for the future of GPLv3, with implications that could reshape software freedom as we know it.

At issue is whether licensors have the power to impose 'further restrictions' on open-source software, potentially undermining the explicit rights granted to users and developers under AGPLv3, GPLv3, and LGPLv3.

The outcome of this case, now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, could set a dangerous precedent, limiting the ability to remove proprietary restrictions from copyleft-licensed software.

With little public attention on the case, the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has stepped up as a key voice in defense of user rights, filing a critical amicus brief to challenge the lower court's ruling and protect the principles of software freedom.

Nawww

[Aighearach]

The defining moment(s) of the future of GPL3 happened long ago, when it was rejected by most of the community in favor of either staying with GPL2 or switching to the Apache license.

Kinda gross that instead of linking to the case or reporting on the case the link is to an amicus brief, which is completely irrelevant and unlikely to even be read by anybody on the court.

Also you forgot to even say who the parties are, which is how cases are identified.

Re:

[vbdasc]

GPL has hardly any of the flaws of communism. GPL haters never cease to amuse me.

Re:

[higuita]

so lets complain about GPL and give zero facts and end using the communist flag... because it is for sure evil (hint, it isn't, don't confuse communism with soviet socialism)
If there are zealots in the GPL side, for sure there are also zealots in the BSD side

and then you end with "Steal other people's content, post it without even looking at it." ... so just like BSD, right?! (yes, i'm trolling you!)

Re:

[sinkskinkshrieks]

Point of support: the Soviets never implemented communism. It was the plan but they never got there and stopped at corrupt and totalitarian Stalinism, much like how China stopped at their own flavor of totalitarianism mixed with socialism, Maoism.

Btw, the Trump Musk duumvirate is attempting to implement "shock and awe" anarcho-libertarianism with flavors of anocracy, kleptocracy, and ochlocracy, which are equally utopian compared to communism and is unstable, corrupt, and inefficient compared to successfu

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[Anonymous Coward]

No they didn't. The Soviet Union was a Stalinist dictatorship, China was and is a Maoist dictatorship. Communism, like all true Marxist systems, is freedom. Communism ends in a free society, never a dictatorship. That's what communism and socialism are - free societies. Implement them correctly and you NEVER get a dictatorship, you get governance by the people, ALL of the people, in a free society.

Democratic socialism is just one path to the freedom of communism, the other path is revolutionary communi

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[Kernel Kurtz]

Implement them correctly and you NEVER get a dictatorship, you get governance by the people, ALL of the people, in a free society.

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" can only work with extreme levels of state coercion. I think your definition of free is the issue here.

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[Zak3056]

GPL is communism.

Sure. But it's voluntary communism, which makes all the difference. No one is forcing you to use GPL software at gunpoint, and no one can appropriate your code unless you purposefully mingle it with GPL and distribute the resulting combined work. The idea that the GPL (at least v2) is somehow harmful is an absurd one and even Microsoft gave up on pushing that narrative a long time ago.

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[znrt]

Trump (and therefore you) is now buddy with Putin, you're about to find out that you actually like communism, that you've always liked communism. Better count your fingers again.

Trump (and therefore you) is now buddy with Putin

no, he isn't.

putin (actually russia (actually most of the planet)) doesn't give a shit about trump nor what he says because he knows full well that no american/western leader can be trusted, promises won't make it anymore and any deal will come with hard facts or simply won't be. but trump has to make good on his bravado of ending the war, which he is powerless to do except by accepting all conditions because russia holds all the aces, so he has to brag about a phone call with putin that was nothing but an

Re:

[znrt]

interesting. is that why trump's minion just ruled out ukraine's nato membership and assumed russia keeping annexed terriories is pretty much a fact? look, right on your own msm circus:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/s... [pbs.org]

thanks for showing up, troll, i was starting to fear you had learnt something but i'm happy to see you're still happy to keep blurting out nonsense about donkeys and inflation and whatnot. keep it up!

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[znrt]

LOL that's a bit rich coming from a leader who has broken every treaty he's ever signed.

you might want to be specific?

russia followed both minsk agreements to the letter. it were western leaders like merkel or macron who admitted that there never was any intention to honor those agreements by the west in the first place, that they were just a ruse to gain time to send military forces to ukraine. i.e., they lied in their faces. this is documented.

also, the promise of "not an inch eastward" expansion of nato is also documented (as much as pundits deny it), as is every single subsequent eastward

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[znrt]

Russia hasn't honoured a single agreement

not a single one? oh, then you must have plenty of evidence of several agreement breaches to enlighten the audience and substantiate your claims!

or maybe this is just more of your hateful idiot slobbery babbling?

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[znrt]

so no evidence at all. right.

you know, you seem to be the only troll left with enough motivation and insistence to keep spouting your senseless russophobic propaganda in view of the harsh reality finally coming into full view. you're not the smartest of the bunch, are you? not even enough to be a passable troll. sounds familiar, i actually have a hunch of who you might be. not that it matters. then again, kudos for persistence but fail for performance. keep trying, have a nice day.

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[DarkVader]

Putin is NOT a communist. He's a capitalist oligarch kleptocrat dictator. Russia was NEVER actually communist, but hasn't even called itself communist since 1991 - over 30 years ago.

I have no idea why this idiocy persists that Russia has any sort of connection to communism in 2025.

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[_merlin]

I have no idea why this idiocy persists that Russia has any sort of connection to communism in 2025.

Americans were indoctrinated very effectively during the cold war. Communism is their big bogeyman.

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[martin-boundary]

Indeed, nobody else cares, but it's good for a laff.

Re:Nawww

[null etc.]

GPL is communism

No, GPL is GNU/communism.

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[alexgieg]

GPL is communism.

Hahahahahahaha!

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[DarkVader]

The GPL is not an economic system.

The GPL is a workaround for the attack on freedom that is copyright law. It exists to use the evil of copyright law against itself.

Don't like the GPL, work to repeal copyright.

Re:Nawww

[jmccue]

The defining moment(s) of the future of GPL3 happened long ago, when it was rejected by most of the community in favor of either staying with GPL2

The reason it was rejected was due to fortune 500 companies, they want to keep using free labor and keep their bits (enhancements) hidden from us. Just take a peak at Red Had/IBM and what they did to CentOS to see an example of not using the GPLv3. If Linux was on v3, CentOS would still be a thing.

I worked at IBM, the owner of Red Hat, and when I was there, IBM forbade the use of any GPLv3 software on their systems, this includes people using a Linux RHEL Workstation instead of Windows (like I did).

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[tlhIngan]

I worked at IBM, the owner of Red Hat, and when I was there, IBM forbade the use of any GPLv3 software on their systems, this includes people using a Linux RHEL Workstation instead of Windows (like I did).

Most big companies did. They saw the GPLv3 and what happened with it. Many of the big ones suddenly implemented legal review of open source code - if you wanted to use open-source code in any product, that product needs to be vetted for its license.

Internal only use of GPLv3 was restricted to make sure the

Re:

[jms00]

See my comment below - but I don't think you get how serious this is. The title should have been "all open source" not just GPLv3. This case isn’t just about GPLv3, I believe it threatens all open-source licenses. If upheld, it could create a legal loophole where licensors can attach restrictions to open-source software, overriding the rights explicitly granted in licenses like GPLv2, MIT, and Apache. The court’s misinterpretation of AGPLv3 could set a precedent allowing companies to undermine

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[Aighearach]

Welcome to Earth, don't forget to sample all the flavors of Earth Sugardrink during you visit.

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[vbdasc]

Google is your friend (well, in most cases it isn't, tbh)

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[Anonymous Coward]

WTAF? You have a 6-digit iD.

Re: A lie

[simlox]

You a free to choose any license for your code. But if you incorporate other people's code you have to accept their license. And GPL is written to protect the freedom of the end-user, not the corporations wanting to make money from other people's code. A lot of BSD people apparently gets motivated by a lot of corporations using their code, neither paying for it, nor accepting the rights of the user to see, modify etc.. Their choice, they must just accept other won't accept that and not incorporate such code

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[vbdasc]

The copyright holder is also to blame for using a license with ambiguities and contradictions that need to be decided in court. One might even speculate that they deliberately used trollish license to lure unsuspecting parties and sue them maliciously. The court should invalidate their license and force them to use another. This would be a victory for the common sense.

But I agree that SFC's stance is completely irrelevant and stupid.

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[jms00]

See my comment below - this could affect all open source licenses not just GPLv3. That should have probably been more clearly communicated.

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[martin-boundary]

Nonsense. If you don't want to use somebody else's code, you don't have to. Write your own code from scratch, and license it anyway you want to. That's what those guys did whose code you're taking for your project - Only to save time, of course, since we all know you're super smart and could totally write it all from scratch if you had to.

Clickbait

[vbdasc]

I personally fail to see how this can affect the future of GPLv3. In this case, we have a developer who publishes software under a hacked GPLv3 (GPLv3 concatenated with some restrictions resulting in a license that is somewhat self-contradictory and hence on a precarious legal standing, but I digress). Whatever happens in the courtroom wouldn't affect the GPLv3 itself in any way.

Even if the court decides that the non-free license the developer uses is not valid, this won't be a victory for free software. The developer will simply move to another non-free license which doesn't piggyback on GPLv3, eliminating the contradiction.

There are some headlines you read

[rsilvergun]

And you just know they're clickbait. You don't even need to read the fucking summary. The future of X hangs in the balance is one of them.

It's because the headline doesn't really tell you anything useful. A proper headline written by a real journalist includes some actual information because the goal of a real journalist is to get information into people's heads.

The goal of a clickbaiter is to keep you scrolling through ads as long as possible. So the less information in the headline and the less in

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[vbdasc]

Did anyone claim that SFC was doing click bait?

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[jms00]

Not clickbait - I posted this to make the community aware about how bad this could be. My fault for the weak subject and summary - I did not expect slashdot to pick it up or I would have written it better. I am not part of the SFC either.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[vbdasc]

The developer is mixing their own code with AGPLv3 and licensing the whole thing under their own license[which is more restrictive than AGPLv3].

Whoa, are you sure? I couldn't find such a claim in the linked article. If this is true, then it constitutes a clear and obvious violation of AGPL by the developer, and if the court stands with them, then it would indeed dismantle GPL and terminally cripple the free software movement.

I hope it isn't true, for the sake of everyone on this planet.

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[unrtst]

The developer is mixing their own code with AGPLv3 and licensing the whole thing under their own license[which is more restrictive than AGPLv3].

Whoa, are you sure? I couldn't find such a claim in the linked article. If this is true, then it constitutes a clear and obvious violation of AGPL by the developer, and if the court stands with them, then it would indeed dismantle GPL and terminally cripple the free software movement.

Would it not ALSO cripple all software licensing? If I can alter and amend a license on a copyrighted work and then redistribute it under that new license... WTF was the license doing in the first place? You can't add a restriction to something whose licensing condition is that you do not add additional restrictions without violating that license, and then you're back to plain copyright where you have zero license (that's kinda the point and strength of GPL).

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[account_deleted]

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[vbdasc]

But if Neo4j used some AGPL code, then they're licensees with respect to it. And 103 does mention licensees explicitly. They CAN'T add restrictions to the product that uses others' AGPL code. They can add their own proprietary code, but according to the AGPL, the whole result needs to be AGPL.

I'll repeat my question: Are you sure that Neo4j uses someone else's AGPLv3 code? Because if they don't use such code, then they're within they right to use whatever license they choose to.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[vbdasc]

Thanks for the information.

I wish only to comment that if the GPL code is theirs, then they can invalidate, add restrictions, add proprietary licenses etc. as they wish.

Only if they use GPL code from someone else, then they become licensees and are disallowed to add restrictions according to the license.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[jriding]

He used bloodhound to find this one

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[jms00]

Imagine this: a large organization builds its core infrastructure around GPL-licensed open-source software, investing in staff training and becoming fully dependent on it. Then, the licensor imposes a per-minute fee, demanding massive payments to continue using the very software they thought was protected under open-source principles. If the court upholds this ruling, nothing would stop licensors from pulling this bait-and-switch type move. If this ruling is upheld, future disputes could reference it to ju

Re:

[vbdasc]

Imagine this: a large organization builds its core infrastructure around GPL-licensed open-source software, investing in staff training and becoming fully dependent on it. Then, the licensor imposes a per-minute fee, demanding massive payments to continue using the very software they thought was protected under open-source principles.

When some particular version of software has been licensed under GPL, it STAYS under GPL. Licenses can't become more restrictive retroactively. I mean, when you download some GPL software, you download its license with it, and you use that license. You're not bound by any new restrictions imposed after the event of your download. That's why when some company wishes to transition their own free software to a non-free license, they do it with a new version.

If you're alleging that Neo4j has retroactively chang

Post TiVo became a utopian fantasy

[sinkskinkshrieks]

Controlling what some people can and can't do isn't freedom. AGPL doubles-down on insanity such that no one serious can ever use it. Code is free to use or it ain't.

Re:

[vbdasc]

AGPL doesn't control what people can and can't do. Nobody is forced to use AGPL, just like nobody is forced to enter in any particular contract.

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[Ichijo]

Controlling what some people can and can't do isn't freedom.

Freedom is a paradox in that you must create and enforce laws--taking freedom from those who would use it to take it from others--in order to maximize freedom for all.

GPLv3 is crap

[juancn]

It's way too toxic, not even Linux uses it.

I'm more of a true freedom advocate, I like BSD, MIT or Apache much more than even GPLv2, but that one it's still tolerable.

Better Title: The Future of all open source....

[jms00]

This case isn’t just about GPLv3, I believe it threatens all open-source licenses. If upheld, it could create a legal loophole where licensors can attach restrictions to open-source software, overriding the rights explicitly granted in licenses like GPLv2, MIT, and Apache. The court’s misinterpretation of AGPLv3 could set a precedent allowing companies to undermine open-source freedoms in ways previously thought impossible. This isn’t just about one case, it’s about whether any ope

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[vbdasc]

If upheld, it could create a legal loophole where licensors can attach restrictions to open-source software, overriding the rights explicitly granted in licenses like GPLv2, MIT, and Apache.

This is not a problem by itself, IMHO. Licensors are the owners of the software, be it open-source or not. They are entitled to attach to their own software whatever license they want - even a closed-source license or a bastardized AGPLv3 license as in the case of question. And a bastardized AGPLv3 license is NOT AGPLv3. In particular, it might NOT grant users the same rights they have under the pristine AGPLv3. To be clear, using a bastardized open-source license is wrong. It creates ambiguities that need

Re:

[jms00]

The issue is, Neo4j added restrictions but kept the AGPL license name, FSF preamble, and FSF copyright notices, effectively tricking people who thought it was still open source. Had Neo4j done the right thing and renamed the license and not made it look like an official open source license , then that would have been the end of it. Hopefully that explains why this is such a mess. Do you see he issue now?