Simon Law <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 10:10:45PM -0800, Walter Landry wrote: > > Simon Law <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 09:24:41PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > > > On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 09:51:18PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: > > > > > Agreed. In particular, in such a hybrid licence, the word "this > > > > > License" in the GPL text would naturally be taken to refer to the > > > > > entire hybrid rather than just to the GPL. > > > > > > > > I don't think the FSF intends the GNU GPL license text to be interpreted > > > > that way. (I could be wrong, though...) > > > > > > One of the strong hints that the GNU GPL is not meant to be part > > > of a hybrid license with additional restrictions appears right at the top. > > > > > > Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. > > > 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA > > > > > > Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies > > > of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. > > > > > > Everyone who generates a "cut-and-paste" license out of the GNU > > > GPL is plagerising, and violating copyright law. So actually editing > > > the GPL to include more explicit terms is right out. > > > > Maybe I'm remembering something completely wrong, but I thought that > > legal contracts in the US were not copyrightable. > > To my untrained eyes, they appear to be literary works, which > contain significant amounts of original authorship. (The GNU GPL is > particularly clever in its wording.)
Not that this is authoritative, but I found one person [1] who said If the state of the art "air tight" contract couldn't be copied verbatim, the necessity to use less effective words could impede the effective practice of law; only the copyright holder could protect the client to fullest. On that site, there are a number of different opinions. It certainly sounds like the boundaries are different. Insurance companies, apparently, have sued each other over copying of contracts. I think it is fair to say that this is unsettled law. That probably means that Debian should consider contracts as copyrightable. Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED] [1] http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1996-03/0535.html
