In an announcement Wednesday, Free Software Foundation Inc. (FSF) and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) said the review process for Version 3 of the GPL will continue through 2006 with a final license due out in the spring of 2007.

Peter Brown, executive director of the nonprofit FSF, said the revision process for the GPL has been under way since 1991, when the second version of the license was introduced. "We've really been building Version 3 for these past 15 years," Brown said. "It's really never stopped."

Changes in the GPL -- the most popular open-source software license used by developers -- are unlikely to include massive reworking to its core legal framework, Brown said. Instead, the revisions are expected to address provisions in the existing GPLv2 that are no longer needed. That would include wording changes related to how software is distributed under the GPL now that the Internet is a huge part of the distribution process. In the existing GPL, software distribution is described in physical terms using disks, rather than via download, he said.

"There's just tidying up we need to do," Brown said.

Another issue likely to be addressed with the new GPLv3 is the need for increased compatibility with other open-source software licenses, he said. "The issue for us has always been about freedom," Brown said. "It's not about the business model."