Fendt, Oliver <[email protected]>:
> the License text includes the names of the copyright holders: " Sam
> Leffler and Silicon Graphics" .Replacing this specific instance by
> lets say the SPDX template license is a material change.
No, it is *not* a material change. If you replaced the words "Sam
Leffler and Silicon Graphics" with "the copyright holders", the
meaning of the license - the rights and obligations it conveys -
wouldn't change at all.
Your underlying error here is treating modification of the license
as a malum in se (a legal wrong or moral wrong in itself) as opposed
to being legally significant only if the modification significantly
changes the bundle of rights conveyed to the licensee.
This is exactly the sort of wrong belief I mean when I say hackers have
weird superstitions about IP law. I've noticed Europeans are especially
prone to it, possibily due to overinterpreting the moral-rights clauses
of the Berne Convention. (Which tthe U.S. opted out of, anyway.)
If you tried to bring an action based on such a semantically trivial
change, the judge would laugh at you before throwing you out of
court. In the U.S. or Great Britain, if he were in a particularly bad
mood he might slap you with a civil fine for wasting his time. (In
civil-law countries like Germany he might not be able to do that.)
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
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