Re: [PROPOSAL] Full text of GPL must be included

[John Galt <galt@inconnu.isu.edu>]

On Fri, 1 Dec 2000, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 11:12:52PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> > On 30 Nov 2000, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> > > Copyright law does not extend so far; contracts in general are not
> > > copyrightable.
> > 
> > Please notice that what I posted was the copyright notice of the GPL.  Are
> > you saying that the header of the GPL is invalid?  Where a part of a
> > statement is proven wrong, the rest must be suspect, so why are we having
> > this discussion if the GPL itself may be invalid?
> 
> You are confusing the contract within the GPL (the license) with the rest of
> the GPL, the preamble and the footer. Everything before the first ^L and
> after the last ^L to be precise.

Not really: A contract within a copyrighted body is the one exception to
the rule that a contract is generally not copyrightable.  Your checks
aren't copyrightable, but the book is, so therefore the checks are under
copyright (YMMV in .de).  The GPL is copyrighted in the header
statement.  Thus the work is copyright, so therefore the contract is
under copyright.  If the header truly fails to cover the license, then the
entire GPL is just a monument to bad faith bargaining, since there is
little within the GPL save the license, so again we come to the point that
if the GPL isn't under copyright, why are we having this discussion?  Who
cares what the GPL may say about anything when the copyright of the
document itself may make the license unenforcable?

 
> Marcus
> 
> 

-- 
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<a href="mailto:galt@inconnu.isu.edu";>John Galt </a>