Re: Manoj, why are you suggesting to infringe the copyright law?

[john@dhh.gt.org]

Manoj writes:
> Nothing requires licenses to be bundled with the products them selves.

Some licenses require exactly that.  'Verbatim' should suffice for the
rest.  We really need the opinion of a real lawyer on this stuff, though.

> Books are copyrighted too. What was the last tiem you say a license on a
> paperback?

The purpose of a license is to either grant rights beyond those granted by
copyright law, or to attempt to restrict rights to less than than those
granted by law.  Paperback publishers wish to do neither, and so include no
license.  When was the last time you saw a paperback without a copyright
notice?

Marcus writes:
> The "verbatim" section was not about the copyrights of the software we
> ship, but was about other immutable documents. You choose to extend the
> discussion to copyrights as well, and so far I have not heard any voice
> supporting you in this opinion.

I support him mostly.  I think we should work at moving non-free copyrights
to verbatim, but I don't see any urgency, and I think that non-free
copyrights that require themselves to be bundled with their software can
stay in main without the world ending.

Something to consider:  Unlike the GPL, most licenses do not include their
own license.  Most packages come from upstream in a single tarball,
including the file containing the license, which is considered to apply to
all the files in the tarball.  Does it not, then, apply to itself?  If so,
this would make most free licenses free.
-- 
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI