Dear Mark,

In message <01813E194C768044A6486DB30B5338CCC312E490@...> you wrote:

As a general rule of thumb, one should *not* modify the licensing
terms of another copyright holder. Adding an SPDX Identifier to an
existing file is one thing. Removing (or modifying) license notices
by a non-copyright holder is another and a bad idea.

This is the exact question I'm trying to get an official position for.
From the technical point of view the substitution of the (onmodified,
standard) GPL license text by a reference pointing to the same text
seems harmless. [We could consider this some form of "include"
statement.] But IANANL, so it would be intersting for me what for
example the FSF or the SFLC think about such replacement of the GPL
text.

Especially if you end up with less information (e.g., loss of
warrantee disclaimers, copyright notices, important license text,
...).

Note that I explicitly talk only about the unmodified body of some
standard license text. Any other text like what you list here is
obvioulsy a different thing and must never be touched.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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