Get ready....

[Derek J. Balling]

No, I think a "LicenseGPL" should be created. :)   It allows you to copy
the "meat" of the license, but not the name or identifying marks associated
with it.

e.g., you would be free to copy the GPL in its entirety, then gut out
"paragraph 10" if you so chose, but when you use it, you couldn't call it
the GPL any more.

That way, a user can look at the title of the license and know "ah, the
GPL" without having to look for changes (which I agree would diminish the
value of the GPL), but would likewise allow someone who needed to "tweak"
it for their use to create their own version, called something different so
as not to cause confusion.

Maybe even require it to be identified like:

Derek's License (c) 1999
( A derivative of Paul's License  (c) 1999 )
( A derivative of the GNU Public License (c) 1998 )

Where Paul copied the GPL with changes, and I copied Paul's with some changes.

At 07:42 PM 4/14/99 +0000, bruce at perens.com wrote:
>From: "Rob Edgeworth" <rob at edgeworth.org>
>> I think it is important to establish right off the bat that any open source
>> license is public domain (or better yet GPL'd).
>
>Of course you must prohibit modification of the instance of a license that
>is actually used to protect someone's copyright, or it isn't of any use in
>protecting the copyright. It's OK for a _prototype_ license to be modified,
>though, and then instantiated as a real software license that can not be
>further modified. Whether this is allowed or not is up to the license
>author.
>
>I doubt this does anything positive for us, though. It sounds as if it would
>only encourage the proliferation of more license variations.
>
>Note that the GPL isn't under the GPL. I don't really have a problem with
>that, because I think most modifications of the GPL would diminish it. 
>
>	Thanks
>
>	Bruce