Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian
Glenn Maynard <g_deb@zewt.org>:
> > Well, doesn't the GPL say something on it being illegal to impose additional
> > restrictions on distribution?
>
> If the restriction is agreed upon by all copyright holders, then the issue
> is murky; as far as I know, there's no consensus on this issue on debian-
> legal. (I believe Branden Robinson claims that any such additional
> restrictions render the license internally inconsistent, such that it's
> impossible to satisfy, but not everyone agrees.)
That's not what I remember.
If the copyright holder includes a copy of the GPL but writes that the
software is licensed under the GPL plus additional restrictions, then
this is not "illegal" as far as I know (there's nothing in the GPL
that prevents it from being used in this way). Of course, the
resulting licence is not compatibile with the GPL, so if the program
were linked with other GPL software Debian could not distribute it.
If the copyright holder in one places writes that the software is GPL,
but in another place adds restrictions, then that would be
inconsistent.
> I don't know of any software in Debian or non-free that is licensed
> under the GPL with additional restrictions (except, perhaps, this one).
> If you know of any, it might be worth bringing up on d-legal.
I vaguely remember cases of people including the GPL but then writing
some additional text that seemed to be either an incorrect
clarification or an additional restriction. If I remember correctly,
these people subsequently relented when they realised that they were
making their licence either inconsistent or GPL-incompatible.
I hope that reiserfsprogs will remain GPL. If the only way to persuade
Hans Reiser to keep the program GPL is for Debian not to remove the
verbage, then I would be willing to make that compromise (but I'm not
a Debian developer).
Edmund
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