Re: License of the GPL license
On 04/16/2018 08:50 AM, Giovanni Mascellani wrote:
> "Changing is not allowed" is in conflict with DFSG #3. Has this thing ever been discussed?
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. It is nothing more than my
understanding, which might be wrong. Furthermore, the same basic legal
theory applies regardless of the specific license.
The license is not distributed under the license it describes. Rather,
it is distributed under standard copyright, with all the ARR
implications that that carries.
There are technical, legal questions (^1) as to whether or not licenses
are, in and of themselves copyrightable. AFAIK, thus far, no license
creator has sued for copyright infringement, because another license was
based on their license. This is a legal quagmire that nobody wants to
get into, because regardless of who wins, everybody loses, and will pay
far more than they currently pay. This loss is both short-term, and
long-term in duration.
If you modify the text, you have to change the name of the document.
Incrementing the number in the name is not enough of a change.
You can't call it _GNU GPL 5.x_, but you can call it _My Public License
5.x_.
^1: Licenses are either legal boiler-plate, or terms of art, and hence
lack the creativity required to qualify for copyright protection.
jonathon
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