On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 05:48:14PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: > MJ Ray writes: > >On 2004-07-19 11:38:23 +0100 Matthew Garrett > ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >> The GPL discriminates against people on > >> desert islands who have a binary CD but not a source one. > > > >I must have missed that one. How? > > Easy - if you don't have the sources to those binaries, how can you > meet the requirement to either provide the sources or offer to produce > them within 3 years?
You can't, but this doesn't fail the desert island test. The core of the desert island test, as I understand it, is that the critical freedoms we expect for free software must be executable while on a desert island. It's true that you couldn't distribute your CD of binaries to your desert friend, but the fact that you're on a desert island is irrelevant to that--the GPL wouldn't allow it even if you were at home. -- Glenn Maynard
