Re: All GPL'ed programs have to go to non-free

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 06:46:41PM -0500, John Hasler wrote:
> Matthew Garrett writes:
> > In general, the law doesn't allow us to modify the license attached to a
> > piece of software.
> 
> That has nothing to do with creating a derivative of a license for use
> elsewhere.

You are allowed to do that with the GPL, under certain conditions[1]:

* You must not call it 'GNU GPL', and you must modify the
  instructions-for-use at the end so that they don't mention GNU.
* You must remove the preamble.

The former is already allowed by the DFSG (section four). The DFSG
doesn't talk about bits that must be stripped from software if you want
to make a modified version, but it's not even remotely the same thing as
having an invariant section that cannot either be removed or modified.

Of course, you cannot modify the GPL and then assume that original
authors will accept your license; that is the only way in which the GPL
isn't modifiable. But that isn't a problem, is it?

[1] http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCModifyGPL

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