Ubuntu open to aiding derivative distributions (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

NewsForge looks at GPL compliance and the derivative distribution. "The article revealed that many distributions' maintainers were erroneously assuming that they did not need to provide source repositories for packages they did not modify, so long as the original upstream distribution did provide the source code. This responsibility is by no means new, but seems to have been widely overlooked. David Turner, GPL compliance officer at the Free Software Foundation, suggested that these distros might come into compliance by making some arrangement with the upstream supplier."

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Storm in a teacup

Posted Jul 15, 2006 1:34 UTC (Sat) by jhoger (guest, #33302) [Link]

So say someone malicious (a competitor) organizes thousands of others as an "attack" on your boutique distro. They don't really need the source, they just want to give you a hard time. Say they are serious and make 1000 requests. You make an offer to each of the 1000 via email to provide each of them a copy for the nominal $10 copying fee per CD, with say 3 CDs. They accept your offer, and you order a CD company to start making copies. At the end of this production and fulfillment process, you make $30,000 in revenue.

Nice problem to have. Where do I sign up?

-- John.

Storm in a teacup

Posted Jul 17, 2006 11:15 UTC (Mon) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]

At the end of this production and fulfillment process, you make $30,000 in revenue.
Nice problem to have. Where do I sign up?

Presumably the average "boutique" distro maker is someone with a day job (probably worth significantly more than $30,000 to them) and someone who likes to spend their evenings doing something more interesting than collecting fees and stuffing envelopes.

So if you're serious about wanting to sign up, I guess you could figure out how to turn the $30,000 into a business that could take care of the whole process (from receiving the request to mailing out the CD's) for them. Maybe there already is such a service someplace, I don't know....

Storm in a teacup

Posted Jul 17, 2006 19:26 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Well considuring that if I had to fill 30,000 dollars worth of cdroms it doesn't mean that I would have to quite my day job. I don't see much of a problem with it.

And if it's to much effort then just tell them to F-OFF. Who cares? Just because you have a license that says that you have provide the source code and you have a person or company or enemy or whatever demanding 1000 copies of the source code doesn't mean that you have to give it to them,

Good luck on them if they try to then contact the upstream copyright holders and try to convince them that your violating their software licensing by not giving in to their unreasonable demands.

And even then your only obligated to give the source code to the people that are end users. Some spammer who sets up a 1000 accounts or somethign to harrass you doesn't count.

Storm in a teacup

Posted Jul 18, 2006 7:48 UTC (Tue) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

There are quitre a lot of companies out there. And many of them will do the work for you completely ...

Bear in mind you are ENTITLED to charge "reasonable costs". That includes finding a low-cost outsourcer to whom you can simply pass the request and they'll sort it out.

Yup, if I was in that situation, I'd just go to a couple of CD duplicator companies I know and ask them to give me a quote. I can't see them turning down the business :-) (Oh, and I'd expect them to take care of billing the credit cards, too :-)

Not just for compliance

Posted Jul 15, 2006 5:40 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

If nothing else, the arrangement would allow the maintainers of derivative distributions to focus on development rather than compliance.

While I see the problem of small distributions I don't why GPL gets so much attention! I mean: if you don't keep sources for old distributions around then how the hell can you do any regression testing or bug-hunting ? And if do keep sources around then handing it on a CD for $10 is piece of cake. Thus the only thing GPL does is making you do the work you pretty much need anyway!