On Wed, Aug 19, 1998 at 11:30:53AM -0500, john@dhh.gt.org wrote: > > But if someone modifies the GPL and releases a program under the modified > > GPL, that is an incompatibility which you can't correct. You can't > > modify his program to put it under the real GPL! > > But if someone writes his own license and screws it up, you may not even be > able to use his program! Licensing is messy, get used to it. See KDE for an example, though I guess they are going to eventually clean that up (I hope!) > > So people can and occasionally do write incompatible kinds of copyleft > > using language much like the GNU GPL. But they surely do it less often > > than if we invited them to do it, and that is very important. > > And they surely bungle it more often than they would if they were allowed > to derive from the GPL, and that is very important. Software published > under defective licenses often cannot be distributed at all. I still argue that you can derive from the GPL without the GPL permitting you do so. Otherwise, the modified BSD license used in several places (the 2 and 3 clause versions) would be copyright infringement. If that sort of is the case as Manoj suggests, well, the X license which includes such a modified license is copyright infringement. This could get messy fast. =>
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