[Openicc] GoSoC 2011: opensource and ICC licenses

[Cyrille Berger Skott]

On Thursday 05 May 2011, James Cloos wrote:
> One of the goals of the GPL is to allow those who receive software to
> fix it and distribute those fixes.  That goal is not compatible with
> "you can't change it w/o also renaming it".
How so ?

> [...]
> 
> So, to be GPL compatible, you have to allow changes w/o requiring
> renaming, but you can require that any changes be declared.

No. Look at the end of paragraph of [1]:
"The GPL requires the maker of a version to place his or her name on it, to 
distinguish it from other versions and to protect the reputations of other 
maintainers."

And in the license itself in [2]:
5a) "The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and 
giving a relevant date."

7e) "Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade 
names, trademarks, or service marks"

Changing name does not prevent the distribution of a modified version of a GPL 
program. However, it is considered a problem by some distributions, like 
debian, and this is why they had to rename firefox to iceweasel.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
faq.html#WhyDoesTheGPLPermitUsersToPublishTheirModifiedVersions
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

-- 
Cyrille Berger Skott