Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964901AbWBCDf4 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2006 22:35:56 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S964906AbWBCDf4 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2006 22:35:56 -0500 Received: from wproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.184.205]:12165 "EHLO wproxy.gmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S964901AbWBCDf4 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2006 22:35:56 -0500 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:reply-to:to:subject:date:user-agent:cc:references:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:message-id:from; b=ERZo0TPUedilZTDKqPPCwZ9x+6s2e+TCsz2TQ3Kb4seJJLCBXCqNHDdQY3X3XhMUO7/yh/msXrzNPbQ47xL4gwa2tzKMA81HYze8Zzcp6KEPklnSKUoNyszi32XuJ4VtYCkb6ppxhRPfPdOmvsUbVa2i1He2RN2014CQliRvDJk= Reply-To: ajwade@cpe001346162bf9-cm0011ae8cd564.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com To: Kyle Moffett Subject: Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 22:35:43 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.8.3 Cc: Rene Herman , Linus Torvalds , Linux Kernel Mailing List References: <43D114A8.4030900@wolfmountaingroup.com> <200602020139.26065.ajwade@cpe001346162bf9-cm0011ae8cd564.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com> <12C8ECBA-B36E-454A-9C03-8990EA5C4609@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <12C8ECBA-B36E-454A-9C03-8990EA5C4609@mac.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200602022235.43898.ajwade@cpe001346162bf9-cm0011ae8cd564.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com> From: Andrew James Wade Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1704 Lines: 32 On Thursday 02 February 2006 01:57, Kyle Moffett wrote: > But see, even assuming the really odd case of a project consisting of > one file, the GPL, that project would be completely GPL compatible. > As the license specifies the licensing terms for the project (IE: the > GPL), it may not legally be modified _even_ _under_ _copyright_ _law_ > (because it's the project license). Well ok, but modified copies of it (that aren't the license) could be made. For the sake of argument, imaging copying the preamble into another file and adding a few paragraphs there, with a prominent notice of your modifications. This is allowed by the GPL (the License is the same, and you're not violating the other terms either as far as I can see). But it is not allowed by the license for the text of the GPL. Hence the problem. It's an odd squirrelly corner case of the sort that cause licenses to bloat up with verbiage. The out is if the license file is not a portion of the program, in which case section 2 of the GPL doesn't apply. I think this is what Alan Cox is arguing. However, while it would be convenient if the License text wasn't considered part of the program, I'm not sure that reasoning would hold up in court. It's also a complete non-issue: both because no-one is going to actually object to the text of the GPL being there, and because it can be replaced with a simple link in the extremely unlikely event that the need arises. Andrew Wade - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/