Re: PHPNuke license
Simon Law <sfllaw@engmail.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 10:10:45PM -0800, Walter Landry wrote:
> > Simon Law <sfllaw@engmail.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> > > On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 09:24:41PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > > On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 09:51:18PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> > > > > Agreed. In particular, in such a hybrid licence, the word "this
> > > > > License" in the GPL text would naturally be taken to refer to the
> > > > > entire hybrid rather than just to the GPL.
> > > >
> > > > I don't think the FSF intends the GNU GPL license text to be interpreted
> > > > that way. (I could be wrong, though...)
> > >
> > > One of the strong hints that the GNU GPL is not meant to be part
> > > of a hybrid license with additional restrictions appears right at the top.
> > >
> > > Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> > > 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
> > >
> > > Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
> > > of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
> > >
> > > Everyone who generates a "cut-and-paste" license out of the GNU
> > > GPL is plagerising, and violating copyright law. So actually editing
> > > the GPL to include more explicit terms is right out.
> >
> > Maybe I'm remembering something completely wrong, but I thought that
> > legal contracts in the US were not copyrightable.
>
> To my untrained eyes, they appear to be literary works, which
> contain significant amounts of original authorship. (The GNU GPL is
> particularly clever in its wording.)
Not that this is authoritative, but I found one person [1] who said
If the state of the art "air tight" contract couldn't be copied
verbatim, the necessity to use less effective words could impede the
effective practice of law; only the copyright holder could protect
the client to fullest.
On that site, there are a number of different opinions. It certainly
sounds like the boundaries are different. Insurance companies,
apparently, have sued each other over copying of contracts.
I think it is fair to say that this is unsettled law. That probably
means that Debian should consider contracts as copyrightable.
Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu
[1] http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1996-03/0535.html
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