Question about the GPL copyright notice and the statement of copying permission not being included in all the source files of a product.

[Carthik]

Hi,

Please excuse me if there is an answer to this problem, that I haven;t
found inspite of searching long and hard. I tried :)

If a software "product" which consists of 'n' different source files
is distributed as bundle with a copy of the GNU General Public License
document (license.txt), but none of the 'n' (or maybe 'm' out of the
'n') source files in the product contain any kind of copyright
statement , or reference to the GPL, are the files under GPL? Is the
product considered to be released under GPL?

In other words is it absolutely essential to follow the
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html) howto to the word, and
if, in case a software product like the one I described above contains
source code files that do not adhere to the following requirement -

"Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two
elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such
as "Copyright 1999 Linda Jones"), and a statement of copying
permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of
the GNU General Public License (or the Lesser GPL)."

- is the product still a GPL product, if not what licence/copyright
scheme describes the product or the source files?

Thanks in Advance for taking the time to think about this. If I think
any more I'll go nuts!