Wesley W. Terpstra said: > So, what does that mean for a package where the copyright holder > distributes the package with an extra clause and GPL? Can I > redistribute it at all? > > PS. Please CC me on replies as I am not subscribed.
IANAL, IANADD, IJRD-L. The last time this conversation came up, it ended that basically, there are three possibilities: If the package contains GPL'd code that is written by someone other than the main copyright holder (Adtran), then the package is undistributable. This is because the GPL+advertising is not GPL-compatible. If the package contains only code copyrighted by Adtran (or at least, code that is licensed under this strange GPL+advertising license), then the actual license is not the GPL, but a new GPL-like (but GPL-incompatible) license that includes this advertising clause as part of its terms and conditions. Third, (and this is uncertain legal territory) the work is licensed under the GPL, since the GPL explicitly delimits the "terms and conditions" in its text, and the additional requirements in the cited COPYING file are not legally binding, but are merely a request. In the second case, the license info for the Debian package should reflect that it is _not_ licensed under the GPL. --Joe
