Martin B?hr wrote: > On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 02:04:30PM -0700, John H. Robinson, IV wrote: > > As an example, RieserFS is GPL'd code. It contains lots of > > advertisements and props to sponsors. It is perfectly in the realm of > > the GPL. > > i seem to remember that i think in debian they wanted to remove some of > those ads and got a complaint (not that that would have been enforcible)
That is correct. Debian's argument was that 1) the blurbs were taking up way too much screen realestate, and was a) making the actual output obsucred and b) interfering with the installer while 2) the license allowed the chage to remove the advertising blurbs. > > The GNU GPL does allow one type of forced speech: The copyright > > blurbwhen the program is run interactively. If such a blurb is there, > > you may not remove it. I'm not a big fan of that clause, personally. > > isn't that part of the general requirement that you must inform the user > about the license? No. You msut distribute the license with the code, but this is part of legal codes not software licenses. A lot of people try to point out that the GNU GPL is an example of a non-free thing that Debian distributes. What people keep forgetting that the GNU GPL in its role as a license is a legal ducument. You are allowed to change the GPL and apply it to your own code as much as you want. However, you cannot change the way that someone else licenses their own code. > so, i don't think that's an if, but simply, you must have such a blurb > somewhere. Usually as the LICENSE file in the tarball. Debian keeps that in /usr/share/doc/package/copyright so you may refer to it. -john -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
