Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > The legal terms are not copyrightable; > > In some jurisdictions, perhaps, but not all.
Indeed. I might be wrong here, but I think that one of the ways the Law Society in England prevents non-solicitors from taking work away from qualified lawyers is by asserting copyright on the standard terms and conditions used for buying and selling property, say, and then licensing those terms and conditions only to members of the Law Society. They may also raise money by charging for the use of certain legal forms. I think that licence texts should be public-domain. You could X11-license them, but it would be very confusing to have to carry around a licence for the licence, not to mention a licence for the licence for the licence, plus a few changelogs, perhaps, so public domain is best for that particular purpose, I think. Debian seems to allow the use of licences that are themselves unmodifiable. It's a practical necessity, I think, and fairly easy to justify by saying that licences are a kind of meta-content rather than content of the distribution.
