Re: Thoughts about gnuplot license and copyrights

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Dave Denholm wrote:
> Hans-Bernhard Broeker <br...@ph...> writes:
> (you didn't cc the list - was that intentional ?)

Ermm. no.  Shift key must be blocked or sumpin' ;-[

I'm putting them back on now.

> It's not clear that GPL does prevent usurpation... 

It only prevents silent usurpation, because you can't legally remove all 
traces of previous work from a GPL'ed program.  An usurpator can't, in 
particular, remove other people's copyright notices without breaking the 
law.  Nor can he change the licence.  Nor can he legally hide the 
modified source files containing his changes to avoid revealing his evil 
self.

> it encourages forks, and and it doesn't seem able to prevent a forked
> version of the sources from keeping the same calling itself "gnugo
> 3.8" or whatever.

It doesn't.  Copyright (and thus the GPL) is not about protecting 
anybody's (or their product's) good name, it's about protecting their work.

As OSS authors, we consciously already decided to give up a large part 
of the work's protection.

If protection of their and their's works reputation is what they want, 
people are supposed register a brand name for the product and sue for 
infringing on that.  As for the rest, the relevant question is: what's 
in a name?