Requesting informations about possible gpl violation

[laurent at vromman.org]

Hi all,

I have just subscribed to this mailing list to ask a question about a software I have downloaded yesterday.

I won't name it for the moment, I first want to understand if there really is a GPL violation or not.

The version 1 of this software was GPLV2. But in the heads of the source files, there are copyrights, which are, if I understand things well, completely unlegal and useless, since GPLV2 is supposed to be copylefted.

Example of source file :

...
 * LICENSE: This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
 * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
 * as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
 * of the License, or any later version.
....

 * @copyright  2003-2005 XXXXXXXX <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
...
__source_here__

That was the first problem.

Now, there is a new version of this software (version 2), which is not GPL anymore. This is a "semi-opensource"-homemade-licence as they call it which doesn't seem to be GPL compliant at all. The same developpers have done both versions (but since GPL is copylefted, I don't think that changes anything).

They have rewrited some parts of the source code, of course, but there still are lots of remaining code from the first version. The new version is definitively a derivative work from the version 1, and some files (previously marked as GPL) remain almost unmodified between both versions (except for the license part, which does not seem legal to me).

Is this a GPL violation, like it seems to be from my point of view, or not ?

Don't hesitate to ask for more details if necessary to answer my request. The only thing I won't reveal, for the moment at least, is the name of the project and authors.

Regards,
-- 
Laurent Vromman

Key ID : B57DA503
Fingerprint : 2214 8446 F5A7 F310 EB67  25F2 A683 42D3 B57D A503

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