gpl question

[Hynek Hanke]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 04:43:17AM -0500, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> Then you must not have read carefully enough. 
> http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatIfWorkIsShort
> says:
> "What if the work is not much longer than the license itself?
>           If a single program is that short, you may as well use a
>           simple all-permissive license for it, rather than the
>           GNU GPL.

It just says that if you don't want to bother you with including the
full license (because of it's lenght), you can use a much simpler
license for such small code and it's still ok with FSF ethics. It
doesn't say that you have to do so or that you should do so. There is
no such requirement in GPL.

So if you think your program is valuable or it might grow in the
future or whatever, it's perfectly ok to use GNU GPL. The size of your
package will double (since you have to include the full text of GNU
GPL into it), but if you don't mind, there is no problem.

> > You are free to modify the license in any manner you see fit.  I do not 
> > recall if doing so, still confers upon you the right to call it a "GPL", 
> > but the terms are i denticle.

No, you can't change anything in GPL nor made a modified copy under a
different name! Read GPL. It say's that the text of the license is
copyrighted by FSF and copying and redistributing is ok, but you can't
modify. This is only reasonable, from my point of view, since
otherwise there would be a lot of incompatible licenses and a great
mess. Also, no developer should create a license himself, he should
always consult a lawyer.

I highly encourage any developer wanting to do Free Software to read
the license and put some effort into understanding it since it's one
of the fundamental things of Free Software.

With Regards,
Hynek Hanke