Peter wrote: > > On Sat, 2 Dec 2006, Shachar Shemesh wrote: > >> This matter plagues small Linux distros much more. They often only put >> up the source code for modified software. There was a Slashdot story, >> about half a year ago, saying how essentially all small Linux distros >> are violating the GPL due to this article. > > Let's not be so clever. Being clever has nothing to do with it. > A small Linux distro often does not have the resources to put up a > full source tree. yes, I know. However, for all practical purposes, the license does not consider this. I'm not even sure it could if it wanted to. > In theory linking to the source tree stored elsewhere and supplying a > diff against that should be enough. I'm not sure you are right.
The GPL has one aim in mind - maintaining the software's freedom. Imagine the following scenario: 1. Party A rolls out a new Linux distribution. Many of utilities on the distribution are unmodified, and so it says "just download them from X". 2. A's distro becomes popular. 3. One of the upstream providers goes bankrupt, and so has to pull his stuff off the web. Effectively, A are now violating the GPL, despite not doing anything to cause 3. 3 can happen in lots of other ways. For example, upstream decides that the version in question has become too old, and replaces it with a new one. This GPL article comes in to prevent this scenario. If you distribute the binary, you have the legal obligation to give the source. You cannot off-load this obligation to anyone else. > When I made a single floppy linux demo ten years ago and uploaded it > to sunsite I got a request for source (it was clearly stated on the > floppy how it was made). I answered the email with the same > description (take 1.2.13 source tree, apply patch by Petri Matilla > (sp?), compile, copy binaries from list into image, dd kernel and > image to disk and you are done). The 'answer' was that the floppy > image was deleted from sunsite (I could have supplied more exact > instructions if asked - but I was not asked). I used it for ten years. > At the time I had 33600 modem access only and I used to run up 200NIS > bills for Internet alone, plus phone costs. There was no way I could > offer a full source mirror and sending source CDs out abroad would > have bankrupted me (I did not own a burner then). You could have asked for S&H fees. It's right there in the license. > If the cleverness of the guardian dogs of open source consists in > making sure that aggregators and contributors have at least 5GB > storage and 500GB/month transfer for something that used to fit on two > floppies (never mind one) ten years ago then they are not clever. And > those who are not aggregators or never created or contributed (to) any > projects and just bark along are just dogs imho. What about people who are neither? The thing is, as has come up before, no one has EVER revoked a GPL license due to this clause. The fact remains that it's still there, and there for good reasons. > If this is a bandwidth-pissing contest I want to know now. No, it's a question of freedom, just like (most of) the rest of the GPL. > Peter Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
