On Wed, 29 May 2002, David Neary wrote: > Raphaël Quinet wrote: > > On Tue, 28 May 2002 14:52:53 -0700, "Ben Gertzfield" <che@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Howdy GIMP folks. Here are some points in the licensing of GIMP that > > > need to be addressed. Specifically, there's a lot of code that requires > > > that the authors be mentioned in the documentation, but there is no > > > mention of them anywhere. > > > > Hmmm... This is bad, because this is not compatible with the GPL. So we > > must either stop distributing these files or distribute them in a separate > > package that is not GPL'ed. > > Why is giving credit to an author incompatible with the GPL? Because GPL gives the end users the free right to modify and redistribute so long as they obey the GPL license. They can't freely modify it if some of the comments or parts of the documentation can't be deleted or changed because they are required as adverts. Admittedly, it's hard to imagine why you'd urgently need to delete such a thing - but GPL doesn't go into reasons, it just grants users blanket rights to modify. For reasons not to start subtly modifying the GPL, read about all of the horrible things that are happening to Wine, WineX and ReWind! If they'd used an unmodified GPL from start to finish, none of that would have happened. ---- Steve Baker (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail) L3Com/Link Simulation & Training (817)619-2466 (Fax) Work: sjbaker@xxxxxxxx http://www.link.com Home: sjbaker1@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.sjbaker.org
