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While not as familiar a name in open-source circles as Linus Torvalds or Richard M. Stallman, for those in the know, Eben Moglen ranks near them in his importance to the free software movement.
Now, the Columbia University professor of law, general counsel for the FSF (Free Software Foundation) and one of the main authors of the GPLv3 is leaving the FSF and the GPLv3 behind.
In a blog entry entitled “And Now … Life After GPLv3,” Moglen wrote that for him and for his “colleague Richard Fontana, after months of living and breathing GPLv3, the weathers beginning to change.”
Moglen continued, “The release of Discussion Draft 3 has been greeted as warmly as I dared hope” and while “I thought, and continue to think, that it would serve beautifully as the final GPLv3… I agree with RMS [Richard Stallman] that it was very important to add another cycle of public discussion, and Im sure the Free Software Foundation will be making some changes based on that discussion, as it has in response to comments all along.
“But I think the big issues have been correctly addressed, and that the detail work—which as lawyers we have to take more seriously than everyone else—is ready for the pressure of reality.”
Therefore, Moglen said, it is time to start thinking “about life after GPLv3.”