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GPLv2 says: "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.".

GPLv3 explicit says: "not allow patents to restrict development and use of software"

GPLv3 also say that you can not use hardware restrictions as a trick to circumventing the no-further-restrictions legal requirement.

One could argue that GPLv2 already include everything GPLv3 do in form of that single line. Doing such interpretation would for all practical purposes upgrade every gplv2-only project to the same conditions as of GPLv3 (but with fewer license compatibilities). The FSF clearly decided not to go that route, and created the GPLv3.



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