Re: GPL traitor !

[Hyman Rosen]

Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
>
> "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
> license document, but changing it is not allowed."
>
> Go and tell all those Guh-NÜ-slash-Linux distributors that according to
> you, they are lacking permission to copy and distribute the GPL as part
> of their distributions (i.e. compilations/collective works).
>
> And then go to doctor, silly.

Why? To the extent that a GNU/Linux distribution is a collective
work and the included licenses can be considered part of that work,
you are correct - the compilers have not received explicit permission
to include the GPL as part of that work.

Of course, since the license files do not actually participate in the
operation of the distribution, it is not clear that the licenses would
be considered part of that work, rather than simply accompanying the
files which are part of the work.

And in any case, the license authors want the licenses to accompany
the programs, and it is common industry practice to do this, so even
if the distributions were technically infringing, no one would care.