The third version of the GNU General Public License finally came to fruition on Friday, promising a level of protection against software patents. It's been a stormy few months for the open-source community regarding patents, as Microsoft has been in talks with most of the leading Linux vendors over a variety of partnership agreements. Some, such as Novell, yielded. Others, such as Red Hat, did not. But the controversial GPLv3 has divided the open-source world, with Linus Torvalds weighing heavily into the debate.







