inquery about "GPL with commercial exception"

[Florian Weimer]

* Ben Finney:

> As an interesting point, GPLv3 is even better for this: it has a clause
> (GPLv3 §7) that explicitly grants the recipient the freedom to ignore
> the offending additional restriction, and to strip that restriction from
> the terms when they redistribute the work.

It's somewhat doubtful this applies if the original copyright holder
added the restriction, even for works originally released under the
GPL, version 3.  When confronted with such conflicting declarations of
intent, the conflict has to be resolved somehow, and the personal
declaration of the copyright holder likely takes precedence over some
fine print listed somewhere in a run-of-the-mill license text (mainly
because the copyright holder is clearly aware of their personal
statement, but not necessarily of the fine print).

If you have to use a GPL upgrade clause to arrive version 3, and then
remove the additional restriction, things are tilted even more in
favor of the copyright holder's stated restrictions, especially if the
publication of their work predates the GPL, version 3.

In any case, I find this discussion a bit besides the point because
Debian should honor upstream's wishes regarding distribution and use,
even if not legally required to do so.