Rex Dieter wrote:
"The" script used to generate the (GPL) rpm on the VNC website is in the sources? Really? If so, I'll shut up and go away.
Promise? ;) Just kidding.
I haven't looked, but from what others have said there is a sscript or Makefile that will build the binaries from the sources. Since this was provided in the original GPL sources it is required to be distributed in the future also. I personally beleive that the orignal copyright holder could if they chose exclude even this file, since it only makes things easier. Though I don't understand why they'd GPL it at all if they wanted to make building the program harder? Most people GPL something to make it easier.
Once the program is built, once the binaries exist, they can Zip them up, tar them up, jar them up, or make an RPM it doesn't matter. There may be ways to both compile the sources and put them into an RPM in one step, but that's not the only way. It's also possible to put binaries that were made some other way into an RPM.
Even if there was a specfile for putting those binaries in an RPM, that specfile won't automatically also be able to build them from the sources.
'Prefferred form' means you can't offer the sources up compressed with some compression program that you wrote, or that is proprietary, or only availabe on a specifc platform. The term is vague in order to try to be 'future proof'. When the GPL started the internet hadn't really caught on. There were more than one large networks, and the 'preferred form' manytimes was still a tarfile on a magnetic tape.
Since then the internet has arrived, and the 'preffered form' is now downloads, in any easily expanded archive format. The source format doesn't have to match the binary format.
This is what it boils down to surely, and I humbly disagree.
Have you ever heard of anyone else making this claim? How was it resolved?
-Kyle _______________________________________________ VNC-List mailing list [email protected] To remove yourself from the list visit: http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list
