Re: upstream has license which is an edited GPL
On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 01:42:13PM +0400, Stanislav Maslovski wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 04, 2008 at 11:40:19PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> > Stanislav Maslovski <stanislav.maslovski@gmail.com> writes:
> > > One thing that I have to note also that after this standard header
> > > the author writes: "For more details see the file COPYING." which is
> > > the changed GPL.
> >
> > I would expect the explicit word of the license grant "For more
> > details see the file COPYING" to indicate the explicit wishes of the
> > copyright holder, and hence have significance in determining what the
> > license is.
>
> In this particular case of CDDE I believe that the author simply made a
> mistake. That was, perhaps, his first project under GPL. He did not
> realize that the GPL preamble and appendix were inseparable parts
> of the GPL document. For instance, his project page on Freshmeat [1]
> explicitely states that CDDE 0.2.0 is under GPL.
>
> The fact that he did not change any of GPL terms and conditions
> in his edited license and kept the name of the license intact
> also shows this.
>
> > It might be that, since the copyright holder has explicitly referenced
> > that document for specific terms, you cannot legally just substitute
> > the correct GPL document in place of their copyright-violating
> > document. Of course, you cannot legally redistribute the
> > copyright-violating document either.
>
> I am still waiting for his reply. If he does not answer, I think a
> possible solution is to fork, assuming that the upstream is MIA and
> then correcting his mistake.
>
> [1] http://freshmeat.net/projects/cdde/
I have received a reply from the author. That was indeed his first project
and somehow he made that mistake. Problem solved!
PS Will package it soon and then ask for sponsorship here :)
--
Stanislav
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