Question on OSD #5

[David Woolley]

Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> Chris Travers wrote:
>> On Nov 26, 2007 7:07 PM, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> I think this requirement (to retain a given copyright statement) can be
>>> waived by the copyright holder in question.
>> Does anything in the GPL v2 prevent anonymous contributions?  I.e.
>> even if you have a requirement to say what changed, if a contributor
>> requests anonymity, I can't see any rational reason why that would run
>> amok with the license.
> 
> It doesn't explicitly say, but GPLv2 would seem to have passed Debian's
> notorious Dissident Test (http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html),
> so I'd assume yes.  Note that making an anonymous, non-copyrighted

That doesn't require anonymity.  It only requires that a distributor can 
chose who they distribute to and not be forced to, say, contribute back 
to the main project.  It addresses the secrecy case with respect to 
putting on a classified network or giving it to people you are sure will 
keep it in the family.

(Names of individuals can be protected by assigning the copyright to the 
organisation.)

> modification is different than requiring someone remove your copyright
> statement.


-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.