pointless question about permissions

[Memfis]

If a wad's readme contains unmodified license template, so at first it says "You MAY not distribute this file" and right after that it says "You MAY distribute this file" (like here)... can I distribute it?

[mouldy]

sure, as long as you don't distribute it

[dannebubinga]

To me, it looks like the author forgot to change the original message to "may NOT".

I wouldn't distribute it.

[andrewj]

No, since clearly the author has not explicitly given a "copy right" to the work.

[Grazza]

In this case, the author clearly didn't understand, didn't care or couldn't be bothered.

I'd view it as similar to the case where an author puts nothing at all in his text-file about permissions or just says something like "I don't give a fuck about copyright." That is, technically no permission is granted beyond the implicit permission to download and play the wad.

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

wow. I haven't seen a confuse readme file like this since NeoDoom.

The best thing you can do is to mail the author to ask him what he meant in the readme.

[SFoZ911]

To me, it's looks like he was fooling around with the textfile, but nothing is for sure.

Pretty much what mark said, best thing to do is contact the guy.