History
In the mid-1980s, the GNU project produced individual free software licenses for each of its software packages. The first free license in history, the GCC General Public License, was applied to the GNU Compiler Collection and was initially published in 1987. The Original BSD license is also one of the first free software licenses, dating to 1988. In 1989, version 1 of the GNU General Public License (GPL) was published. Version 2 of the GPL, released in 1991, went on to become the most widely used free software license. Starting in the mid-90s and until the mid-00s, a trend began where companies and new projects wrote their own licenses, or adapting others' licenses to insert their own name. This license proliferation led to problems of complexity and license compatibility. One free software license, the GNU GPL version 2, has been brought to court, first in Germany and later in the USA. In the German case the judge did not explicitly discuss the validity of the GPL's clauses but accepted that the GPL had to be adhered to: If the GPL were not agreed upon by the parties, defendant would notwithstanding lack the necessary rights to copy, distribute, and make the software 'netfilter/iptables' publicly available. Because the defendant did not comply with the GPL, it had to cease use of the software. The US case (MySQL vs Progress) was settled before a verdict was arrived at, but at an initial hearing, Judge Saris "saw no reason" that the GPL would not be enforceable.
Read more about this topic: Free Software License
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)