The drafting of gpl-v3 ran from January 2006 through its release on June 29, 2007 — an unprecedented eighteen-month public consultation process that produced four public drafts and solicited comments from thousands of individuals and organizations worldwide. The process was organized by the free-software-foundation and led by stallman with eben-moglen as the primary legal architect.
The drafting addressed three major technical and legal problems that had emerged since gpl-v2 was released in 1991.
The first was tivoization: TiVo and similar hardware manufacturers had used GPL-licensed software in products whose hardware was locked down so that users could not actually install modified versions of the software, even though the GPL's source-code requirements were technically satisfied. Stallman argued this violated the spirit of the four-freedoms — freedom to modify is hollow if the hardware prevents running the modification. GPLv3 added the "Installation Information" requirement to close this loophole.
The second was digital-restrictions-management: GPLv3 prohibited using GPL-covered software as part of effective technological protection measures in ways that restrict users. This was controversial; some argued it made the GPL incompatible with legitimate security applications, while Stallman maintained the distinction between security and control.
The third was software patents: GPLv3 included an explicit patent retaliation clause and addressed the risk of patent cross-licensing deals (such as the Microsoft-Novell agreement of 2006) being used to fragment the free software ecosystem.
linus-torvalds publicly and consistently opposed GPLv3 throughout the drafting process, objecting to the tivoization provisions and the complexity of the new license. He announced that the Linux kernel would remain under gpl-v2 only, a decision that stood. This created a permanent bifurcation: the gnu-project's tools and the FSF-maintained software moved to GPLv3, while Linux remained on GPLv2-only. The gnu-linux-naming controversy acquired a new layer: the two halves of the system were now under different GPL versions with different philosophical commitments.
The public drafting process itself was significant as a model of open governance. Comments from the public, legal scholars, and industry were incorporated into successive drafts, documented on the gplv3.fsf.org site. This transparency was partly a deliberate contrast with the closed processes of proprietary licensing. The resulting license is longer and more technically complex than GPLv2, reflecting the more sophisticated legal environment four decades into the software industry's development.
The gplv3-and-later-career-2006-present era is defined in large part by the consequences of this process: the split with Torvalds over tivoization, the saas-loophole that GPLv3 still did not close (addressed later by the agpl), and the ongoing debates about whether copyleft can keep pace with new forms of software deployment.