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

On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 20:37, Nick Rout <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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?

To the best of my non-lawyerly knowledge, it violates either clause 5,
or 6 of the GPLv2, which requires that people you distribute software
to under the GPL under the same license.  Adding additional
requirements that prevent distribution of modified versions (eg: not
under the same name) means that you have rights that the person you
distributed to doesn't.

I think that the GPLv3 allows that additional restriction, though,
which is strange; they call out that additional terms including
"prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of the software" are
permitted.

Which is an interesting new addition that I hadn't noted before.

Daniel
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