Re: [PROPOSAL] Full text of GPL must be included

["James R. Van Zandt" <jrv@vanzandt.mv.com>]

Chris Lawrence <lawrencc@debian.org> writes:

> I have an idea: we hack gzip to automatically decompress a particular
> coding sequence to the text of the GPL.  Then all we have to do is
> force people to use our hacked gzip (screw up the magic in our
> header) and we don't have to use any additional space in the
> distribution.

Actually, we should prevail on RMS to modify gzip upstream to compress
the particular sequence of characters in COPYING to a special code
(say, two bytes long).  That would pretty much eliminate the impact on
mirror disk space and download time.  It might even be justified on
purely technical grounds (a common sequence should be easily
compressed).

More reasonably, I think it is time to bring the GPL up to date.  The
GPL is now widely available.  It should now require only that a binary
program be accompanied by (or include) a pointer to the GPL.  A URL
would suffice.  Or the address given in the copyright file of the
.deb.

			- Jim Van Zandt