We now know what happens when big hairy software coders work with big hairy lawyers. The result, understandably, is anything but slick. Meet GPLv3, the free software movement's latest legal tool to keep their code from being fenced in.
At least its author, Richard Stallman, has pluck. The coder and richly bearded patron saint of free software is launching this wad of legal jargon Friday — with practically every geek on the planet fixated on the retail debut of the iPhone — looking to steal a bit of Apple Chief Steve Jobs' hype.