[uk.comp.os.linux] Re: Smoothwall GPL - not quite licensed under GPL

home at alexhudson.com home at alexhudson.com
Tue Aug 14 14:15:07 UTC 2001


On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 02:07:42PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> Interesting.  Is there any restriction on people calling non-GPL
> software "GPL"?  I mean, is GPL a trademark?  Should it be?

GPL isn't a trademark, and can't be (I don't think!) because there are many
'GPL's. The one we all know and love is the GNU GPL, which we usually call
the GPL - hence people often call it the GNU Public Licence :(.

It probably ought to be a trademark though, and probably should be called
something other than GPL in practice if people are going to start farting
around with it. I'm certainly not particularly in favour of people messing
with it (I presume with SmoothWall this is a function of the unavailability
of free ADSL drivers for Linux, perhaps?)

I wonder what you can enforce with the anti-change clause. I suspect you are
not allowed to call it the GNU GPL when you change it, but perhaps it means
more than that?

Cheers,

Alex.



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