Hi debian-legal, I need a minor clarification. While applying the terms of the GPL (say, GPLv2) the license text says:
How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest
to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
Is it OK to modify 'which-license' part of the above as follows:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
with the Debian GNU/Linux distribution in the file
/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
(basically, plugging in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL in the last para).
Is it necessary that one only adds the path to the license text _after_ the
above, like dh-make templates [1] do (however, if there is a requirement to
quote it verbatim, dh-make templates themselves seem to call the 'program' or
the 'library' -- in case of LGPL -- as a 'package').
Bernd and I were discussing this, and hence this email.
Cheers,
Giridhar
PS: Please Cc: me on responses. I am not on debian-legal.
--
Y Giridhar Appaji Nag | http://www.appaji.net/
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