On Nov 10, 2005, at 12:51 PM, AgentM wrote: >> IANAL: I believe there is nothing legally preventing you from doing >> this >> and it is permissable under the GPL; >> it is however considered extremely bad etiquette. > > Huh? I am not a lawyer either but I know that Mr. Citek's > hypothetical situation suggests a copyright violation- no different > from erasing the publisher's copyright from a book and writing "(c) > 2005 Mr. Sparkle". It's a lie. > > The GPL builds on copyright- it doesn't replace it...
But books usually have a note saying all rights reserved, including the right to modify. In contrast, the GPL allows modifying the work. Would it be more accurate to say the GPL allows modification of the work except for the copyright notice? Nowhere in the GPL does it state that the copyright notice cannot be change, but maybe that's implied. Or perhaps it is stated explicitly in the copyright laws. BTW, my gut tells me you're right in that the copyright notice cannot be changed. But my gut sometimes differs from what the law says. Regards, - Robert http://www.cwelug.org/downloads Help others get OpenSource software. Distribute FLOSS for Windows, Linux, *BSD, and MacOS X with BitTorrent _______________________________________________ CWE-LUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.cwelug.org/ http://www.cwelug.org/archives/ http://www.cwelug.org/mailinglist/
