A group of technology giants that includes @CA Technologies Inc., @Cisco Systems Inc., @Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co., @Microsoft Corp., @SAP SE and @SUSE have signed on to an initiative that aims to promote greater predictability in open-source licensing. The initiative relates to open-source software licenses, including the GNU General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public License, which cover numerous important software projects such as the @Linux Kernel. The release of GPL version 3 stipulates that distributors of open-source code governed by the license should be given the opportunity to correct errors and mistakes in compliance. The thinking is that this new approach allows for license compliance to be enforced in a community where “heavy-handed” approaches to enforcement are “out of place,” Red Hat Inc., which leads the initiative, said in a statement. “The large ecosystems of projects using the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.x licenses will benefit from adoption of this more balanced approach to termination derived from GPLv3,” Red Hat explained in a press release announcing the new license-compliance partners. The companies have all agreed to adopt something called the “Common Cure Rights Commitment,” which means they will give distributors of noncompliant software time to “cure” or “reinstate” licenses before taking legal action against them.
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