[29J]

keepamovin doesn't have or need a licence at all (GPL or otherwise) so can't be violating it. He is distributing his program by virtue of being the author/copyright holder, not by virtue of owning a (GPL) licence for it. He doesn't need a distribution licence (from himself).

In LICENSE.MD, he declares that I (for example) may take a copy of his program provided I choose one of the licences he is willing to offer me. One of the choices is known as the GPL. Let's say I choose that. Now he's given me a copy of the program and granted me an unmodified, unrestricted GPL licence to use and distribute it. Let's write the terms down in a file called licence.gpl. (This is just a copy of the GPL itself.) I don't hold the program's copyright. I don't have a licence to distribute the program further under his LICENSE.md but I do now own a licence to use/distribute my copy of it as described in the licence he's granted me, licence.gpl.

My distribution licence (licence.gpl) doesn't allow me to add extra restrictions when distributing. So people I distribute to under the terms of my licence.gpl will automatically be granted a GPL licence by keepamovin (not me) to distribute further.

keepamovin as the author and perpetual sole copyright holder is different from me and people I distribute his program to, who are all mere licencees never copyright holders. We all hold licences he has granted to us directly and individually. (We don't grant licences to each other, having no right to do so. The GPL allows me to distribute my copy of the program to you at which point keepamovin will automatically give you a licence. (A licence is more abstract than a licence file.))

All distributions rooted in my copy should probably make clear that they are under licence.gpl not LICENSES.md. But that's something for any program offered under a choice of licences to solve.

The copy of the program at the site above is offered by keepamovin under an open source licence (GPL) and also other licences. The site thus does have an open source offering of the program. So it's true that "BrowserBox Pro goes open-source".

(Just as a licence is more abstract than a licence file, a program here is more abstract than a copy of a program. A person's giving a program to another person means ownership has transferred. So I was careful to write "copy of the program" above, as none of this distribution/redistribution involves transferring ownership of the program, which abstract work remains forever only keepamovin's.)

[smarx007]

Fair enough, I stand corrected. Worth noting that differences over interpeting the relevant provisions of GPL led to a lawsuit and the court didn’t rule in favour of the side that relied on these provisions: https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/02/court_neo4j_ruling/

[29J]

From a quick glance, that lawsuit seems qualitatively different. It's about a hybrid licence that I'll call AGPLCCL here. One side thought it therefore wasn't an internally consistent licence and the court ruled that it was.

keepamovin is offering to grant me an unadulterated (i.e. non-hybrid) GPL licence to use/distribute my copy of his program. I'm treating as axiomatic that the unadulterated GPL is an internally consistent and open-source licence.

[keepamovin]

It's definitely confusing, but thankfully there are folks like 2PJ who can do it for us! :)