Re: PHPNuke license program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or

[Simon Law <sfllaw@engmail.uwaterloo.ca>]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 01:09:36PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 01:38:52PM -0500, Peter S Galbraith wrote:
> > Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > What this restriction is much *more* like is the Zope web bug ("all
> > > pages rendered with Zope have to have our little image on it"), against
> > > which Bruce Perens successfully campaigned some years ago.
> > 
> > Perhaps, but the Zope license required it explicitely, while the PHPNuke
> > author is relying on the GPL section 2c to enforce it.
> 
> I don't think I gather that from this:
> 
> "YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO REMOVE NOR CHANGE/EDIT THAT NOTE."
> 
> explicitly stated in the Debian copyright file for the package.
> 
> I think that is an extra restriction.

	It appears to be an extra restriction.  If it were to fall under
2c, then the HTML it generates should be similar to this:

    <center><font class="footmsg">
    PHP-Nuke version 6.5, Copyright &copy; 2003 by Francisco Burzi.
    PHP-Nuke comes with <a href="http://phpnuke.org/no-warranty.html";>
    ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY</a>.
    This is free software, and you are welcome
    to redistribute it under <a href="http://phpnuke.org/license.html";>
    certain conditions</a>.
    </font></center>

	Of course, it doesn't.  The author himself fails to "print or
display an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no
warranty" and "that users may redistribute the program under these
conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License."
Thus falling under the exception clause immediately following.

	However, since the Program includes itself within the output,
every PHP-Nuke generated page must contain appropriate copyright
information within.  So there should probably be some text before the
</head> tag.  Perhaps a comment that looks like this:

    <!--
    PHP-Nuke is an advanced web-based content management system.
    Copyright (C) 2003  Francisco Burzi
    
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
    modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
    as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2
    of the License.
    
    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.
    
    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.
    -->
    </head>

Simon