Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 05:05:30 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> Cc: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com>, Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org>, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: RE: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <20000516050530.E8613@physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <002b01bfbec5$73ca0f40$021d85d1@youwant.to>; from davids@webmaster.com on Mon, May 15, 2000 at 04:29:44PM -0700 References: <20000516045301.C8613@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <002b01bfbec5$73ca0f40$021d85d1@youwant.to>
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> No you can't do that, since you don't have permission to. The law regarding > copyright is not that you can do anything you aren't specifically prohibited > from doing. You may only do what you are specifically allowed to do. > > The GPL would be worthless if people could preface it with any clauses they > wanted to that modified its terms in any way they wanted. The instructions > for how to apply the GPL to your own code _IS_ the distribution agreement. > It is the only document that grants you the right to distribute the GPL. You are neither modifying it nor adding a clause. You are distributing your software under it. As long as you don't specify otherwise, it is assumed that this is the license which applies. Even if you specify that explicitly, that doesn't say anything new. If you say "you may also use a later version" *then* you are adding a clause. But the GPL explicitly permits that particular clause (it does *not* insist on it, it only covers that possibility) so it's ok to make that requirement. But if, for instance, you said "you may use version 2 or version 3 but no later version", that is not explicitly covered in the GPL so your point would be valid... R. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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