Brian Mays wrote: > If here "you" refers to Debian, then we are not violating the GPL. We > distribute all of the packages, including "base", which contains the a > copy of the GPL. We distribute the program AND we give our recipients > a copy of the license. If they decide to take one and junk the other, > that is not our responsibility.
Even if everyone agrees with this.. > Now, licensees who distribute one of our GPLed packages without also > distributing the "base" package are violating the GPL. That is not us, > however. This is a hell of an onus to put on anyone who wants to redistribute a .deb file though. If Debian user Fred wants to give Bob a package he downloaded, the mere act of copying it onto a floppy and giving it to Bob would be violating the GPL, yes? > But we distribute a "whole system". If a third party distributes a > subset of our system, which does not contain a copy of the GPL, is it > our responsibility? I don't think so. It's not strictly our responsibility, but if our users cannot freely share Debian packages, I can imagine Debian could become much less appealing to them. -- see shy jo, who three shirts that violates the GPL
