Gunnar Wolf <gw...@gwolf.org> writes: > Francesco Poli dijo [Wed, Oct 07, 2015 at 11:50:53PM +0200]: > > One cannot comply with all these conditions at the same time. The > > "GPL + further restrictions" license is therefore > > self-contradictory. > > Right. But a content creator (in this case, a software author) is free > to choose whatever terms they see fit for their work. In this case, if > what they come up with that best describes their intent is "something > similar to the GPL, but adding a restriction to it to prevent > appropriation in commercial settings", they are entitled to.
The copyright holder can claim that, and can still distribute the work legally, because copyright law does not restrict them to comply with those license terms. Any recipient of the work, though, has no license in the work except what the copyright holder grants. If the copyright holder's granted terms are incoherent (“GPLv2 plus these restrictions” is not a coherent license grant), then the terms are misleading because the recipient has no valid license under copyright law. > And yes, expressing it as "GPL + restrictions" is unfortunate It's more than unfortunate, it is actively misleading (though whether that is intentional or not is still unknown). It gives the strong impression the recipient has some license to exercise some freedoms from copyright restriction, when in fact they have none. -- \ “Come on, if your religion is so vulnerable that a little bit | `\ of disrespect is going to bring it down, it's not worth | _o__) believing in, frankly.” —Terry Gilliam, 2005-01-18 | Ben Finney