How to apply the GPL without violating it

[Arnoud Engelfriet]

By request I'm forwarding this message from 
Gennaro Prota <gennaro.prota at yahoo.com>


Hi guys,

I've a hopefully simple question for you all: what is the *minimal*
required text for applying the GNU GPL to a given work? I'm a bit
confused: paragraph 0 of the normative part of the license says the
license "applies to any program or other work which contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the
terms of this General Public License.". That's very simple, but
doesn't look completely correct to me, as it only refers to
*distribution*. It seems that, at least, it should be generalized to
something like:

  Licensed under the GNU GPL.

(instead of "distributable under" or "distributed under").

So far so good. But the non-normative part ("How to Apply These Terms
to Your New Programs"), complicates things a bit:

  To do so, attach the following notices [note the plural!]
  to the program.

  It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file
  to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty;
  [so, this is safest, but not required, right?]

  and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and
  a pointer to where the full notice is found.
  [and this further confirms that there's no need to put all
  that text in place; but it talks about "full notice", in
  singular form. What's that?]

In practice my question boils down to this: if my source files stick
to the following text:

   Copyright year(s) <my name>
   Licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2

is that enough? Is the second sentence to be considered a "pointer to
the full notice"? If that is of any help, the text I'm currently using
can be seen here:


<http://breeze.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/breeze/trunk/breeze/meta/maximum.hpp?revision=100&view=markup>

but together with the Doxygen markup I find it too heavy and would
like to trim it as much as possible.

-- 
Gennaro Prota -- C++ Developer, For Hire
https://sourceforge.net/projects/breeze/


       
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----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch & European patent attorney - Speaking only for myself
Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/