Re: GPL is more than copying conditions

[John Darrington]

I think that COPYING has to be a better choice than LICENSE for a number of 
reasons.

* A licence is a legal concept.  Most users of software are not lawyers, so 
will not
  understand what it means.  Many *think* they understand it, but in most cases 
it is
  a serious misunderstanding.  Moreover, we don't want users to dwell on the 
juristic
  matters.  We just want them to be aware of what they are permitted to do.

* Whilst it is true that the GPL is about more than copying - to be precise, it 
is about
  copying, modification, distribution and combinations of those three - these 
are all
  variations on the general theme of copying.

* The GNU coding standards have for many years said that packages should put 
the GPL
  in a file named COPYING.

* I think there are many more people are going to want to copy GNU software 
than are who
  are going to want to (sub)license it (which is not allowed).

* A licence is simply something which permits what would otherwise be illegal. 
It
  could refer to many things.  For example a copyright licence, a patent 
licence,
  a television licence, a driving licence ...   Naming the file COPYING, on the 
other
  hand, is much more specific.  She immediately knows this file contains 
matters relating
  to copying the software.  LICENSE on the other hand could mean many different 
things
  For example in GNU Radio it might be assumed to be about licensing to 
communicate on 
  various radio frequencies.

* COPYING has been the convention for so long that people are used to it now.

* LICENSE is a verb.  The correct spelling of the noun would be LICENCE.

J'


On Mon, Jun 05, 2023 at 05:51:56PM +0200, Mohammad Akhlaghi wrote:
> Dear GNU Coding Standards maintainers,
> 
> This issue was recently brought up by Juan Julián Merelo Guervós in the
> "Maneage" project [1] that I am maintaining (see [2]).
> 
> In Maneage, following the GNU Coding Standards and the "How to use GNU
> Licenses" guide [3], we have a 'COPYING' file for the full text of the GNU
> GPL v3+. In [2] Juan raised the following point:
> 
> "A license is much more than copying rights, and the usual best practice is
> to call it that way [LICENSE]"
> 
> Therefore, his pull request has changed the file name from 'COPYING' to
> 'LICENSE' to be a more clear and unambiguous name.
> 
> I wanted to consult you about this: why not recommend to use the less
> ambiguous 'LICENSE' (as well as 'COPYING' for historical reasons)?
> 
> Thank you very much,
> Mohammad
> 
> [1] https://maneage.org
> [2] 
> https://gitlab.com/maneage/project/-/merge_requests/5/diffs?commit_id=c0e85530d35ba
> [3] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html