Re: Licence terms of libstdc++-v3/porting.texi

[dewar at gnat dot com (Robert Dewar)]

I wonder sometimes about the exact legal status of licensing. Just putting
text into a file does not create a licensing or copyright statement of
legal fact. The fact that a file says it is GPL'ed does not make that
true, and the fact that a file does not say that does not make it false.
The fact that a file has a copyright notice in it does not mean that the
stated person has a copyright on the file, and the fact that a file
has no copyright in it does not mean that it is not copyrighted.

The last few statements are just the way the law is, nothing special 
wrt to the GNU project.

But it is unclear to me where the definitive licensing and copyright
statements can be found. For GNAT Professional (as licensed directly
to our paying customers, we provide a formal statement of licensing
conditions, stating that the GPL applies etc etc) But it is not clear
to me there is any such statement that applies to the entire GNU
project. 

Perhaps this is all taken care of, and I am just ignorant of the
situation, if so, I would apreciate being filled in.