Ethics and Law in New Media, week nine

Study the GNU GPL and write a short blog essay about it. You may use the SWOT analysis model (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).

GNU GPL licence was originally derived by Richard Stallman in 1989 in order to protect software and let various professionals develop the source code for free. Nevertheless, it is protected for the people to obtain the code but not put it under copyright licence or patent it. Free Software Foundation carries on fighting for free software promotion, and is allowed to make changes to the GPL when necesary.

The strengths of such licences are, as we all know, freedom of usage and distribution of software, which make the latter easy to distribute, but at the same time retain the rights to the creator of the software (code). This means that the modified versions automatically take the same rights as the original GNU General Public Licence (GPL), and are distributed under the very same conditions of the licence. In such cases the author is protected with copyleft, but the other users are free to distribute the software and also modify it, which adds to the quality of the software. The changes should be marked in order to track the code and notice flaws, which is also positive for this makes the program easy to change.
The licence itself is easy to read and short, so that everybody could get a grasp of the overall text and dig into it, which normally is skipped with long and difficult licence texts.
It is also possible to sell this kind of software under GPL licence provided that the source code is left open. Perhaps the last remark makes software programming easier as well.

The weaknesses of such licences are that the modified versions of the GPL do not necessarily comply with the previous ones, but it is possible to convert them back to previous versions, though. Perhaps a weakness is the fact that modifiers of the programs cannot modify the conditions of the licence due to the fact that the rights still belong to the initial creator, because GNU GPL copyleft is derived from copyright law. As for making business, the users are automatically bound to the licence, thus making them responsible for making sure that if they modify the code, other future users should abide the licence.
The licence does not give warranty to such programs, which may make it difficult to find support or the support may cost more than with commercial OS-s.


Opportunities with GPL are endless, because they enable people to be creative and distribute their creation either for free or for a fee. Other enthusiasts can amend the software and distribute it further, thus making a collaborative, worldwide effort to furbish programs or get new ideas from the others' work.

There is always a threat that GPL will be changed so that there will be some restrictions, like patenting, because the licence permits Free Software Foundation to make changes in the GNU GPL if any changes occur.

So with little threat, this kind of licences are the best way to distribute open and most of the time free software I think the benefits overweigh the doubts and weaknesses of such licences.

Find a good example of the "science business" described above [in the text] and analyse it as a potential factor in the Digital Divide discussed earlier. Is the proposed connection likely or not? Blog your opinion.

Well, if we think of the very same digitalization of books, especially important books, lots of people can benefit from it, starting from the poor Estonian students who cannot afford buying books in the current economic downfall finishing with those who cannot afford University education, for example, but want to get good knowledge of certain topics.
Universities have access to digital libraries but usually it is quite a hassle digging through the protective wall of registration and payment. I agree with Priidu, who said that providers of the materials need to be paid, but as Estonia's university lecturers run courses on Wikiversity, they get paid either through EITSA or the universities themselves, so they are not doing their work entirely for free. So I guess there are alternative payment methods. A good initiative is that lots of international universities have put their lectures online in video format or podcast, that brings the students a better opportunity to learn.