Request for Open Source License Approval

[Seth David Schoen]

That license is Open Source, but it infringes the FSF's copyright:

> Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>                     59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
> Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
> of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

If you want to use the GPL but don't like the particular set of disclaimers
that come with the current version, you could

(1) Write to the FSF and ask for more disclaimers to be added in GPL v3
(with justification for why they are needed), or for permission to modify
the GPL v2 (which I don't think would be granted, just because of the
confusion that might result).

(2) Place your additional disclaimers somewhere _else_ in your distribution,
other than the license.  You are certainly allowed to do this without
violating FSF copyrights; I'm not familiar enough with the law surrounding
disclaimers to know whether the disclaimers need to be contained within
the license itself in order to have effect.

Software developers in the past appear to have behaved as though disclaimers
were effective if the user of a program could reasonably be expected to see
them.

Perhaps, when your program starts, it could say

 This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
 ANY WARRANTY.  For details, type "show license".  For additional disclaimers
 of liability on the part of the Alternate Route Project and the Washington
 State Department of Transportation, type "show alternate-route-disclaimers".

My offhand guess is that a paragraph like that would make _everyone_ happy.
(Retaining the Alternate Route disclaimers would not, of course, be a
license condition, but I believe that distributors would do it, as a matter
of courtesy.  Certainly there are other free software projects with much
more specific additional notations or credits which have managed to "hang
on" through widespread distribution and modification.)

-- 
                    Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>
      They said look at the light we're giving you,  /  And the darkness
      that we're saving you from.   -- Dar Williams, "The Great Unknown"
  http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/  (personal)  http://www.loyalty.org/  (CAF)