It amazes me how few tech geeks who proselytize on Twitter, blogs and podcasts actually use “free” software (free as in freedom, not price point).  The “A Listers” are constantly chirping the need for open standards and OpenID’s, yet they love dogmatically follow the Cult of the Mac. 

Why aren’t more of the Technorati Top 100 using Ubuntu or OpenSuse or Fedora or an open operating system?  If Linux is good enough for Google, you’d figure it’d be good enough for those who love to blog about Google.

But, that’s my rant and it’s beside the point.  The GPL v3 is more than just about Ubuntu or Linux OS’s and is a major development in the tech world.  The fact that it is being released on iDay is no coincidence…

The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works.

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program–to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.

Give it a read and consider the long term implications… it’s good for you.

GNU General Public License - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)