Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: Freedom to take freedom

[Dave Crossland]

On 23/01/2008, Alex Hudson <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 02:02 +0000, Dave Crossland wrote:
> > Okay, you are persuading me that the Liberation family is
> > redistributable verbatim.
> >
> > But if I download it from Red Hat, and the modify it and remove all
> > Red Hat trademarks (apart from in copyright notices) what terms do I
> > redistribute my modified version under?
>
> You'd have to redistribute under the same terms as the original license,
> because it's copyleft: that is, GPL+bits.
>
> If you licensed your changes as pure GPL, that obviously wouldn't be
> compatible with the original license and that *would* mean that your
> modified version becomes basically undistributable. So, you'd have to be
> careful about that aspect of it, which I would agree is confusing.

Okay, I'm with MJ on this, sorry :-)

If I release software with a license in LICENSE.txt and a TERMS.txt
that says "You can only use this on Mondays" - it is not free
software, and you can receive it from me under those terms because I'm
the original licenor, but you can't redistribute it.

I think the point of the GPL is that you can't make additional terms
that are restrictive.

I'll contact Red Hat about this again though.

Thanks,

-- 
Regards,
Dave