What RMS says about the non-freeness of the GPL [rms@santafe.edu: Re: GPL itself non-free]
Hello, this is an answer of RMS about my inquiry.
I asked why the GPL is non-free, and if I could derive a license form the
GPL.
I think this is an important part of our discussion.
Thank you,
Marcus
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From: Richard Stallman <rms@santafe.edu>
To: Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
In-Reply-To: <19980604005449.B12494@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> (message from Marcus
Brinkmann on Thu, 4 Jun 1998 00:54:49 +0200)
Subject: Re: GPL itself non-free
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It seems to imply, that I'm not allowed to derive a new license, using
portions of the GPL (even when changing the name). Is that correct?
Yes and no. There is a legal principle (in the US at least) that
copyright cannot restrict what license terms you use. So if you want
a license which has legal wording somewhat similar to the GNU GPL, but
somewhat different, you can write one.
However, it shouldn't be similar to the GPL in other respects; only in
the actual legal wording that implements the desired effect.
Is it allowed to say "copyright is GPL, except that you ...(additional
clauses, for example the right to link with some commercial libraries)", when
the GPL is included as a whole?
You can get that result, but not in precisely the way you have stated
it. What you need to do is the following:
You can distribute this program under the terms of the GNU General
Public License...
In addition, we give permission to link this file with
other libraries under the following conditions...
But please think twice before you do this! In some cases--such as,
when your program is a library--this will not do any great harm. The
FSF has used this method with libgcc.a (part of GCC) and in Guile, for
example.
But if you do this for an application program, and if your program
needs a non-free library in order to function, then it will suffer the
KDE problem--it will be off limits to free operating systems because
we cannot include the non-free library in them.
If you decide at the outset not to use the non-free library, that may
take some extra work--but the result will be a program we can use!
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