On May 17, 2007, Peter Jones <pjones@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> On May 17, 2007, Max Spevack <mspevack@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> or modifying this code.
>>
>> Not quite. Even the most liberal Free Software licenses establish a
>> few restrictions on modifications you can make
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but the GPL (and I think all the other common
> cases) puts a restriction on distribution, not on modification.
IANAL, but I understand at least GPLv2 imposes obligations even for
private modifications.
See section 2.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section
1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
I realize there are two ways to read this:
2.1. You may modify ... provided that you also meet all of these
conditions:
...
2.2. You may also copy and distribute ... provided that you also
meet all of the conditions above
or as
2. You may modify, copy and distribute, but in order to have
permission to do all of them, you must meet all of these conditions
In the second interpretation, modification alone wouldn't bring any
responsibility whatsoever, since no other portion of the license
brings any such responsibility.
But this interpretation would render meaningless the "or if you modify
it" in the following paragraph in the preamble, that is intended,
among other things, to guide the legal interpretation of the legal
terms:
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the
rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities
for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify
it.
So I believe the first interpretation is the correct one, and that the
GPLv2 does indeed establish conditions for modification.
It's looking like GPLv3 is going to take them a bit further.
I haven't reviewed many of other Free Software licenses with so much
care, so it is quite possible that other licenses do indeed permit
unrestricted modification.
But the fact that GPLv2 may and GPLv3 will establish such conditions,
it means Free Software is not incompatible with them, and so stating
that modification is unrestricted as a general rule seems like a
non-starter.
--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
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