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Re: Modifying the GPL2?



On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 09:10:48AM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 02:25:21PM +0000, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote:
>
> <<snip>> 
>
> > No. It's a "eurospeakised" version, like this:
> 
> > 		    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LISENSE
> > 		       Version 2, June 1991
> 
> >  Kopyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Softvare Fondation, Inc.
> >      59 Templ Plase, Suite 330, Bozton, MA  02111-1307  USA
> >  Everyone is permited to kopy and diztribute verbatim kopies
> >  of zis lisense dokument, but kanging it is not aloved.
> 
> You should not use this as the license under which your program is being 
> distributed.  Automatic transcription of the license in such a manner 
> may introduce ambiguities not present in the original; this may cause
> people to be wary of using your code under the terms of the GPL, because
> they're not certain that it extends the same freedoms as the original;
> and it may cause others to interpret the license as allowing them to do
> things that are prohibited by the original.  If you are interested in
> the freedoms guaranteed by the GPL, I would encourage you to license
> your software under the GPL itself, and not under a 'translated' version
> that has uncertain legal status.
> 
> > Perhaps this can be accepted as a "translation" of the GPL-2 ?
> 
> Because there is no license granted to modify the wording of the GPL 
> itself, you would need to contact the FSF if you wanted to create a
> derived work from the text of the GPL and distribute it.  I can't 
> imagine that they would object to such a work, but if you want to 
> protect yourself legally against all eventualities, the way to go is to 
> ask them.
> 
> Then you could include this translation of the GPL as an example 
> document with your eurospeak package, if you wanted to.
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve Langasek
> postmodern programmer

After a bit of thinking (sanity-check?), I decided to go for the "plain"
GPL-2, unchanged and not "eurospeakised".

Since the GPL does not allow itself to be modified, I chose not to
include a eurospeakised version of the GPL in the package - this got
relegated to an example in the man-page, showing users how to produce
this themselves.

Thank you to all who responded. This legalese stuff seems like a
minefield to me :-)

-- 
Karl E. Jørgensen
karl@jorgensen.com
www.karl.jorgensen.com
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