Re: xfig-doc has license problems in examples

[Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org>]

Sunnanvind Briling Fenderson <sunnanvind@fenderson.com>:

> > Licenses have always been declared out of territory, since there's no
> > need to modify them, and we don't want to argue with various authors
> > over the license of the license.
> 
> There's been several instances of "GPL-ripoffs", e.g. people basing
> their own licenses on the GNU GPL, or was I dreaming that?

I've never seen a licence that includes a large part of the GPL that
wasn't the entire unmodified GPL. Copying ideas or short extracts of
text is not forbidden by copyright law.

Also, you could, if you wanted, include the entire unmodified GPL and
add an introductory section that changes the meaning or what follows.
The copyright notice at the top of the GPL doesn't say that verbatim
copies of the licence may only be made for the purpose of applying the
unmodified GPL. I don't think anyone would be well advised to do that,
however. (The extra text in /usr/src/linux/COPYING is supposed to
merely clarify the GPL.)

Edmund