Re: Final text of GPL v3
(First: apologies. This message probably won't thread properly. This is
because I reading this list via Usenet, but because the Usenet gateway
is, I presume, one-way gateway, I have to reply via the list email
address. The trouble is my email client has no message to reply to,
because it's not my NNTP client.)
Concerning section 5d of the final text of the GPL 3:
> 5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
[...]
> d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display
> Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive
> interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your
> work need not make them do so.
Francesco Poli worries:
> It mandates a feature that I *must* implement in *any* interactive
> interface of my modified work. [...] it seems that when a
> non-interactive work is modified so that it becomes an interactive
> work, the modifier is *compelled* to implement these features in *any*
> newly created interactive interface.
Could this requirement be interpreted more liberally? I'm concentrating
on the bit from "however". Suppose: I receive a program under the GPL 3.
I create a new interface for the program, without the legal notices.
The license says that, when distributing my modified version, I "need
not make" interfaces of "the Program" that don't display a legal notice
display a legal notice. I think, then, to be exempt from the requirement
to make user interfaces display legal notices, my modified version of
the Program would have to count as just "the Program".
Consider that "The Program" is defined as:
> "The Program" refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this
> License.
When I convey a modified source version, 5c) requires the entire
modified work be licensed under the GPL. This then means that when you
convey a modified "the Program", the new bits are licensed, and so the
whole modified program becomes just "the Program". I do not need to add
legal notices to interfaces of "the Program" that lack then.
I'm curious how far fetched people think this is.
If this interpretation were true, then the only burden of this section
would be to keep the legal notices in the user interfaces that you keep,
but you would *not* be required to add any notices to any user
interface, regardless of whether you wrote the interface or not.
--
Iain Nicol
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