Do Debian patches violate the GPL?

[Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>]

The GNU GPL says:

------------------------------------------------------------
  2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

    a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
    stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
------------------------------------------------------------

I guess the interpretation is that we have to alter any file we
change to contain a notice of our changes, once we changed a file.

However, since we do distribute the modifications as separate files
in a .diff.gz patch file, we are not required to add such notices
all over the place.

BUT: If we distribute scripts (shell, Perl, Python etc.) or PHP
files, that are patched before they are packed into a .deb file,
they normally don't contain such notices, even though the GPL seems
to require them, and we do distribute plain files in these cases.

Comments?

Regards,

	Joey

-- 
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