Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:
> I think this is legalistic overkill (though, I am not a lawyer).
I doubt anyone would complain about distribution of breqn, but
technically there isn't permission to do it.
> Unless you think AMS doesn't have permission to put this on
> their ftp site, why would pointing to it be better than copying it?
Doesn't the AMS own the rights to breqn?
> The GPL is not a license to use something freely.
The GPL gives you rights you wouldn't have if you didn't have a
license, and doesn't add any restrictions that aren't there without a
license.
> It is a prohibition forbidding subsequent co-authors from having any
> choice about ownership of their own work.
People have complete choice about the ownership of their own work,
with or without the GPL.
> In my testing, breqn doesn't work that well, anyway.
That's probably why there's no license; I don't think Downes
considered it complete enough to formally distribute. I assume it
would have been distributed under the LPPL if it had been finished.
Jay