Re: adding and forking someone else's GPL software - what should i do?

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Daniel Pittman <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 12:52, Jethro Carr <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Mon, 2011-11-21 at 08:07 +1300, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
>>> On Mon 21 Nov 2011 07:29:49 NZDT +1300, Robin Paulson wrote:
>>>
>>> > reading the GPL, i don't see anything i am obliged to do, but i may
>>> > be wrong in my interpretation.
>>>
>>> You are correct, you *need* to do nothing. Not even change the name. A
>>> while back the LaTeX people made their license to allow everyone to do
>>> everything one expects to be able to do with FOSS, except that they
>>> also
>>> mandated that forks change the package name to stop all hell breaking
>>> loose. Very sensible, but you wouldn't believe the number of militant
>>> screaming idiots over this (all from debian.org btw!) who saw their
>>> freedom infringed...
>>
>> It's actually not an unreasonable concern raised by Debain.
>
> ...and, also, incompatible with the GPL.

which clause?

>
> Most of the Debian concerns, though, are that they want to patch the
> software: their policy on security is that they will not ship a newer
> version for a security issue, but rather will make the minimal patch
> to their release version.
>
> In the LaTeX case, of course, that means they are obligated to change
> the name of the package in the security release, breaking the entire
> world.  Boom.
>
> (In the specific case, the trademark does require that you call your
> project something else, or risk breaking the law if there was any risk
> that your version and the original version might be confused.  Which
> ... there is. :)
>
> Daniel
> --
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