GPL 3 draft draws mostly positive response

Arnö fully understands those concerns. For any official translation, the FSF would want to be absolutely sure that the license could be defended by very competent lawyers fluent in that language. "But when it comes to freedom, I also would like to tout the horn for freedom from dependence on any single language," he wrote.

Free IT resource Virtualization Insights from Top Experts - Learn how virtualization gets real! Sponsored by Dell Free IT resource TechNet: More ways to know it, share it, and keep it running. Sponsored by Microsoft

The FSF intends to continue receiving comments on the initial GPL 3 draft into late April and early May, according to Moglen. Then, Richard Stallman, creator of the GPL and FSF president, and Moglen will take a break and work on the second draft of the license, which they currently hope to release in late May, he said.

"This [the second draft] could be the final release, if there are no open issues on major subjects," Moglen said. However, he doubts that will be the case, so a "last-call" draft scheduled for the fall is likely, he added.

Stallman and Moglen are also working on an initial draft for the Lesser GPL (LGPL) 3 that could appear in May. The LGPL is a looser license than the GPL and can be linked to free or proprietary software not licensed under the GPL. The aim to is run the LGPL 3 process in parallel with GPL 3, according to Moglen.

(Robert McMillan in San Francisco contributed to this story.)