Making the GPL more scary [LWN.net]

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 18, 2018 16:40 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465)
In reply to: Making the GPL more scary by karkhaz
Parent article: Making the GPL more scary

Quoting https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL

It is possible to make modified versions of the GPL, but it tends to have practical consequences.
You can legally use the GPL terms (possibly modified) in another license provided that you call your license by another name and do not include the GPL preamble, and provided you modify the instructions-for-use at the end enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention GNU (though the actual procedure you describe may be similar).
If you want to use our preamble in a modified license, please write to <licensing@gnu.org> for permission. For this purpose we would want to check the actual license requirements to see if we approve of them.
Although we will not raise legal objections to your making a modified license in this way, we hope you will think twice and not do it. Such a modified license is almost certainly incompatible with the GNU GPL, and that incompatibility blocks useful combinations of modules. The mere proliferation of different free software licenses is a burden in and of itself.
Rather than modifying the GPL, please use the exception mechanism offered by GPL version 3.

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Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 18, 2018 16:55 UTC (Thu) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link] (3 responses)

Thank you, I hadn't seen that. (I don't really understand how this FAQ entry doesn't conflict with the assertion that changing the text is not allowed, but if they say that they're not going to take legal action, then I suppose it's fine)

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 18, 2018 16:57 UTC (Thu) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link] (2 responses)

Oh, actually, I do get it. Changing the wording but continuing to refer to the license as the GPL is what is prohibited, but copying and modifying some of the terms for your own differently-named license is fine.

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 18, 2018 17:22 UTC (Thu) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link] (1 responses)

The FSF should really just license the GPL under the GPL. A recursive license would be neat.

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Jan 28, 2021 11:34 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]

The GPL is not source code but prose; for one, there is no notion of "object code" or "machine-readable". This consideration would warrant that a more appropriate license be chosen for prose, such as Creative Commons.