[GRASS-dev] r.terraflow license

[Brad Douglas]

comments below

On Thu, 2007-10-25 at 04:36 +0100, Glynn Clements wrote:
> Glynn Clements wrote:
> 
> > > I'd like to update the copyright of r.terraflow to GPL so that it can  
> > > be included in the upcoming version of GRASS. I am attaching a file  
> > > terraflowNewCopyright.txt.  Could somebody with cvs rights add it at  
> > > the beginning of every single file in r.terraflow?  thanks!
> > > 
> > > 
> > > /* ************************************************************
> > > * 
> > > *   MODULE:	r.terraflow
> > > *
> > > *  COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 Laura Toma
> > > *   
> > > *			This program is free software under the GNU General Public
> > > *	       		License (>=v2). Read the file COPYING that comes with GRASS
> > > *              	for details.
> > > *
> > > *************************************************************  */
> > 
> > Okay, I'll do that.
> 
> In the end, I used the more verbose statement recommended in the GPL
> itself:
> 
> /****************************************************************************
>  * 
>  *  MODULE:	r.terraflow
>  *
>  *  COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 Laura Toma
>  *   
>  *  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
>  *  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
>  *  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
>  *  (at your option) any later version.
>  *
>  *  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
>  *  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
>  *  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
>  *  GNU General Public License for more details.
>  *
>  *****************************************************************************/
> 
> I suspect that there's a reason why, of the many clauses in the GPL,
> the FSF's recommendation is to include the disclaimer of warranty in
> each file.

I had asked about this some time ago when I was updating library
"header" text.  Here's the text that was settled on:

"This program is free software under the GNU General Public License
(>=v2). Read the file COPYING that comes with GRASS for details."

Since the file 'COPYING' comes with GRASS, the user can refer to that
for details of the license.  However, we may want to augment the
statement to say "(v2)" instead of, "(>=v2)".  GPLv3 exists and there
has been no consensus on using it (although, the GRASS statement implies
we already do).


-- 
73, de Brad KB8UYR/6 <rez touchofmadness com>