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The author mentioned this exact problem. Quoting:

> There was a problem that I noticed right away, though: this text was from the GPL v3, not the GPL v2. In my original request I had never mentioned the GPL version I was asking about.

>The original license notice makes no mention of GPL version either. Should the fact that the license notice contained an address have been enough metadata or a clue, that I was actually requesting the GPL v2 license? Or should I have mentioned that I was seeking the GPLv2 license?

This is seemingly a problem with the GPL text itself, in that it doesn't mention which license version to request when you mail the FSF.



A Sid Caesar skit showed doughboys celebrating and one shouted "World War 1 is over!"... when they made GPLv2 maybe they didn't anticipate creating future versions (although yeah, if you're already on v2 you should foresee that).


There is a GPL v.1, and it may have been so numbered at initial publication:

<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.html>


Well to be fair, that's not the full license notice, that's only the last paragraph. There should a couple more above that one and the first paragraph says the version of GPL in use. That said I think the license notice is also just a suggested one, it's not required that you use that _exact_ text.




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