Open licences need a "no passing off" clause [LWN.net]

Open licences need a "no passing off" clause

Posted Jul 15, 2011 12:23 UTC (Fri) by juliank (subscriber, #45896)
In reply to: Open licences need a "no passing off" clause by ayeomans
Parent article: VLC and unwelcome redistributors

Such clauses exist to a certain extent in most major free software licenses.

The GPL-2 has it:
2. a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

The GPL-3 has it:
5. a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified
it, and giving a relevant date.

The Apache license has it, with almost identical wording to GPL2:
4. (b) You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that You changed the files; and

The problem is that it only applies to the source code, not the binary, at least for GPL-2. For the Apache-2 license, it also applies to modified Object form (but since you did not modify the Object form, but the Source form, it's not actually active), and for the GPL-3 the statement could apply to binary as well, although I'm not 100% sure on it.

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