Re: Debian's Linux kernel continues to regress on freedom
On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:17:57 -0500, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> said:
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> On 09/13/07 02:45, Josselin Mouette wrote:
>> Le mercredi 12 septembre 2007 à 16:51 +0200, Romain Beauxis a écrit :
>>> It often start with "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" and it' clearly
>>> written: " Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim
>>> copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed."
>>>
>>> Shouldn't we garantee the right for our users to modify LICENCEs ??
>>
>> This common belief that the GPL text itself is non-free is unfounded.
>>
>> Can I modify the GPL and make a modified license? You can use the
>> GPL terms (possibly modified) in another license provided that you
>> call your license by another name and do not include the GPL
>> preamble, and provided you modify the instructions-for-use at the end
>> enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention GNU
>> (though the actual procedure you describe may be similar).
>> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL
> Paraphrasing Luk Claes:
> besides we as Debian only want our users the freedom to be able to
> if they wanted it, to willy-nilly modify the GPL text.
They can, as long as they publish it under a new name.
> Quoting Mirim Ruiz:
> What about ... changing the format or structure for clarifying, or
> even fixing typos?
Sure, as long as you change the name of the result and call it
Rons General Public License.
There is also a pragmatic distinction: License textsembody the
permission under which we can distribute the software; RFC's do not.
We can't retroactively change the license terms we distribute the
software under; so hacking up a license, under law, would mean we can
not distribute the result. That one point of law makes a critical,
pragmatic difference; so a Work, and the terms of the licesne which
grants us the right to modify and distribute the work, have to be
treated differently -- or else we have no distribution.
manoj
--
If life is merely a joke, the question still remains: for whose
amusement?
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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