Yet another license question

[Rahul Sundaram]

Paul Wouters wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> 
>> You cant add restrictions on top of GPL. Once it is licensed as GPL then it is
>> Free software and can be used the terms of the license which does allow
>> commercial usage. IMO, you can ignore the author's confusion and include it in
>> Fedora.
> 
> I know that. Though I can see myself breaking the AUP of the server by
> accidentally downloading the same source twice while creating the pacakge. Can
> I not sell it anymore then (I guess I can, I would just violate his server's
> AUP not the GPL).

Since the software is under GPL, anyone can mirror the software and 
forget about the original server's AUP and there doesnt seem to be any 
legally binding use policy in the mirrors. So not sure there is a real 
problem other than perhaps a minor hurdle in selecting a reliable mirror 
as the package source. See more on the Debian related note below.


> Also, I don't like the signal the author is sending by the misleading
> statements of pretending that downloads are covered by a license agreement
> different from the downloaded software.
> 
> We all want to get rich and release free software. The Dansguardian way is
> not the way to do it.

Sure. Nobody likes misleading statements that are not part of the 
licenses themselves but that's a moral personal line to draw on choosing 
to use or package the software for other end users. The software itself 
isn't non-free and IMO we shouldn't deny users the ability to use a GPL 
licensed useful software just because the author is deliberately or 
unintentionally misleading. Thats the case for Xchat's windows port too.

The limitations of such tricky things seems to be recognised by the 
author himself. See the FAQ on Debian in this page.

http://dansguardian.org/?page=copyright2

Rahul