For instance, the ability to use free programs to build customized EDI systems, such as those used by companies to trade materials with partners, is already available, said Thomas Dukleth, CEO of Agogme, a maker of a tool used to aid in the cataloguing and searching of library books.

"The free software programs necessary to support systems like EDI already exist," Dukleth said. "Some libraries are already using free software to do this very sort of thing."

Sanjoy Mahajan, an associate director for teaching initiatives at MIT who lectures on the topic of electrical engineering, observed that businesses can significantly benefit from the ability to see the source code in their software programs.

It's much easier to find potential security flaws and build new features on top of existing programs when the underpinnings of the technologies being used aren't hidden as they are in proprietary products, he said.

"You have companies today saying that they can't accept file attachments in Office 2007 because the product is too incompatible with their existing systems, which is something that definitely interferes with business," said Mahajan.

"When something in the free software world gets improved, there's no waiting to buy a new license, everything is shared with all users, so everyone benefits," he said. "I think that now would be a good time for businesses to put more effort into free software; they will get back more than they put in."

Whether or not many enterprise businesses heed such advice remains to be seen, but in the area of vendor support, GPLv3 appears to have already impressed some significant players.

In an e-mail sent to InfoWorld, officials at Sun lauded the additional licensing clarity provided by the updated version, and the company said it would continue to pursue many different distribution models.

"We regard the GPLv3 as a great achievement by the FSF in particular and by the greater open-source community of free software communities," Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun said in the note.

"Sun believes the GPLv3 revisions represent important steps in the evolution of the free software movement. In particular, it clarifies language that was unclear in GPLv2 and addresses many issues that did not exist when GPLv2 was written more than 15 years ago," Phipps said. "We have a strategy to free all our software into open-source communities, and we have strategies for each technology that lead us to choose certain licenses on a case-by-case basis."