Re: [ANNOUNCE] GIT 1.5.4

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds-de/tnxtf+jlsfhdxvbkv3wd2fqjk+8+b@public.gmane.org>
Date: Feb 7, 2008, 22:48 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0802071433461.2896@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080207221837.GQ30368-EQL4cN526mwi5CQI31g/s0B+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org>

On Fri, 8 Feb 2008, Dmitry Potapov wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> 
> Unfortunately, I don't know much about OS X and the packet manager
> you mentioned, but from common sense, I would say you should place
> the copyright notice at the place where users traditionally can find
> it when install other programs on that platform...

Well, the rule in the license is "provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty".

What exactly that means is not something people generally agree about. What some consider "conspicuous", others consider very much "rude and inappropriate", so "conspicuously and appropriately" is simply something that people have to find a balance for.

In general, your common sense interpretation is probably the best legal one too: place the copyright notice about as conspicuously as the user would be expect it to be placed.

On traditional UNIX platforms (including Linux), that tends to be "make it a README file or perhaps note it in the man-pages". On OS X and Windows, what is considered appropriate is probably different.

There is definitely no *requirement* of annoying pop-up click-throughs. In fact, I would say that something like that would be wholly in-appropriate and not at all in the spirit of the GPL on UNIX, where people expect installation to not be an interactive process.

[ Related side note: but at the same time, if a developer actually starts 
  adding those kinds of pop-ups, it's sometimes arguably against the GPL 
  to remove them!

  See 2(c), which says that you have to announce the license when an 
  interactive program is run *if* the announcement was there originally!

  So I actually would encourage people who do GPL'd programs to never add 
  those kinds of annoying interactive license notices, because they can be 
  hard to remove legally! ]

In short: it's a cultural issue which way you want to go, but some care should be taken. I come from a Unix background, so I find graphical installs be really really annoying, and if I see a popup, I just *hate* it. I'd consider it obnoxious and irritating as hell. But I suspect that Windows people really do expect it.

				Linus