On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 08:41:55AM -0400, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > For my part, I've publicly and clearly said that I (much to my chagrin) > was *not* involved in the drafting of GPLv3 (except for some influence > in discussions with RMS when it was still called GPLv2.2 back circa > 2003).
Right. Oh, on the issue of RMS's authorial control, I just remembered that the official (head) draft of GPLv3 during the SFLC era, apart from the public releases, was always conceptually 'the one stored in RMS's laptop', which I think is telling as to who was 'the author'. We made a halfhearted attempt to use subversion at SFLC (and as I recall you really pushed for this) but for the most part we really had no system of version control apart from emailing RMS. :) > I did have some influence over the drafting of Affero GPLv3, in part because > I had originally been the person to invent the idea behind the Affero clause, > and because the main thing I tried (unsuccessfully) to influence during GPLv3 > drafting was the original plan to include the Affero clause in GPLv3 itself > wasn't abandoned. When that battle was lost, I and Henry Poole both urged > the FSF to at least publish an Affero variant of GPLv3, and FSF agreed. Though I take the earlier credit for the idea of an Affero variant as a replacement for the notion of an open set of GPLv3-compatible Affero-like terms, which was being criticized from left, center and right. I've heard you say it was never what you expected -- you anticipated that GPLv3 would incorporate something like AGPLv1 2d. The legal form in which the GNU AGPLv3 then took -- once RMS agreed to this idea -- was something you indeed had some influence on. > But, even there: the 10 words or so in AGPLv3ยง13 that I helped write > were mostly rewritten by RMS. :) I can probably take credit for the word > "opportunity" appearing there, which ISTR suggesting. :) That section was also one of the ones that Brett Smith had a certain amount of textual influence over, as to its final version. - RF
