Wesley J. Landaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Saturday 12 May 2007 16:01:25 Francesco Poli wrote: > > You may not impose any further restrictions with respect to the *rights > > granted by the GPL*. But there are already such restrictions, and you > > cannot remove them because you are not the copyright holder. > > Hence you cannot comply with the license and the work is > > undistributable. > > A licensee can't, but the copyright holder can. Their license is NOT the > GPL, but GPL + exceptions & restrictions. That is perfectly valid, just not > GPL compatible. The exception they have adds extra freedom, and I believe > the one restriction they add is DFSG-free. [...]
First, I think b is not an exception but a restriction. Adding any restrictions to plain GPL results in an invalid licence as in http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/05/msg00303.html That isn't much different to using the plain GPL with an OpenSSL-like licence - both licences are DFSG-free, but we can't satisy both of them simultaneously without additional permission on the GPL side. Of course a copyright holder of the entire work could still copy and distribute and so on because they don't need a licence but we can't because we can't satisfy both of those restrictions simultaneously. The copyright holder could make a new licence out of the GPL, as permitted by the FSF, but they have not done so. I think they should use the plain GPL, because I dislike licence proliferation. I'm surprised that Red Hat have produced an inconsistent licence and I'm surprised that GPL+restrictions isn't widely-known as non-free. Hope that explains, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
