On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 04:24:17PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: > On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 08:49:07PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 12:21:59AM +0100, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: > > > * Though it's generally a good thing that the GPL requires me to > > > provide source, this requirement gives less benefit in the case of > > > text and can have some unpleasant consequences. For example, if > > > someone makes a derived work from my GPL work and "typesets" it using > > > Microsoft Word and I want to distribute a modified version of that > > > derived work, then the other person can quite reasonably claim that > > > the "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" is a > > > Microsoft Word document, which would be highly inconvenient for me. > > > > This is why, when using the GPL for things which are not clearly > > program source code, you must always specify what the preferred form > > for modification is (append it to the license declaration, which > > should be just below the copyright declaration). > > That defeats the purpose of the very careful wording in the GPL: "preferred > form". What purpose do you think that is? I think it's so that the author can use it for things other than source code. You seem to think it's so that somebody can take my docbook/sgml document and convert it into a Word document, and distribute that alone. *That* would defeat the purpose of the GPL. > The GPL doesn't say "the original author's preferred form for modifications", > and that's not an error. It doesn't need to; this is implicit in the nature of copyright law. The license comes from the copyright holder, so it's their preference which counts. If they don't state a preference, then it's up to a court to determine what they could have reasonably meant. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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