On Thu, 15 Jul 2004, kevin wrote: > However, can someone please explain the following line > from redhat-logos.spec in CentOS 3.1 SRPMS: > > License: GPL - CentOS logos Copyright 2003 and Trademark Definitive > Software Ltd > > I hope CentOS is 100% GPL, open source software, > free for all men (and women) to copy and distribute at a small cost Copyright is not license. Materials can be *licensed* under the GPL, and therefore freely copied, even when copyrighted. In fact, the entire basis of the GPL, as I understand it (IANAL etc. etc.) is copyright law -- someone has to hold a copyright on the material in order to have legal grounds for applying the GPL. If no one holds a copyright, then the material is in the public domain and the GPL is neither necessary nor applicable. It is true that in many cases the copyright of GPL'd material is assigned to the FSF or some similar entity, but that is not a necessary condition of licensing it under the GPL. *IF* there were a statement somewhere that explicitly *excludes* these images or other selected parts of CentOS from the terms of the GPL, then you might have grounds for complaint, but the statement that they are copyrighted does not AFAIK constitute such an exclusion. The effect of the copyright is that you cannot separate the CentOS logos from the rest of the sources and use them, independently, for some other purpose, without permission from Definitive Software Ltd. The effect of the GPL is that you can copy and distribute CentOS as a whole, even though it includes the copyrighted images. Do you see the distinction? (Again, I am not a lawyer, and the GPL has all sorts of other effects that might be construed to make it possible to re-use the logos.)