Tuesday, December 2, 2003

The Brazilian Committee for the Implementation of Free Software will release code under the Free Software Foundation's General Public License, with Creative Commons providing new human- and machine-readable packaging

Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL, and Tokyo, JAPAN - The government of Brazil today announced its adoption of the CC-GPL, an innovation on the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) General Public License, for the release of publicly funded software. Brazil is the first adopter of the new CC-GPL, which combines the proven utility and popularity of the GPL with Creative Commons' innovative user interface.

"Brazil's adoption of the CC-GPL is extremely significant," said Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons' chairman and professor of law at Stanford University, from Tokyo, where Creative Commons is presenting its projects in Japan this week. "Brazil has recognized that code produced and funded by the people should be made available to the people, and it has pioneered a tool that provides the best of both the Free Software Foundation and Creative Commons."

"Brazilian government adoption of the GPL is an enormous step forward in the cause of software freedom," said Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia Law School and General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation. "We welcome the chance to work together with Creative Commons to make the GNU GPL even more attractive to governments, which are recognizing that the principle of 'share and share alike' is the most efficient, most equitable, and most pro-development licensing strategy for software the public pays to create or to acquire."

http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/3919