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Re: Final text of GPL v3



Steve Langasek wrote:
If I go to the effort of writing

    This program is Free Software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 as
    published by the Free Software Foundation, with the exception that the
    prohibition in section 7 of the license on additional restrictions does
    not apply and the permission in section 13 is not granted.

then I have *explicitly addressed* the clause in GPLv3 which purports to
prohibit additional restrictions.

Yes, you have. Note that this is not the situation we have been considering up to now in this thread; the situation we have been considering is one where there is just a simple additional restriction (e.g. "if you redistribute you must send me a postcard").

Your above restriction also results in a consistent license. However, it's not GPLv3-compatible.

Which statement is going to take
precedence?

Clearly, your explicit statement that section 7 does not apply. How could one argue otherwise?

At best I've created a lawyer bomb because my intentions are
not clear; at worst I've succeeded in licensing my code in a manner that's
incompatible with the GPLv3.  But that's exactly the same problem that we
had with GPLv2, so what was the point of adding this clause?

Because most of the time, people just add additional restrictions without also adding your language about section 7 - often because they don't realise they can't do that. This feature of the license combats cluelessness, not explicit intent.

Gerv



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