Seems unnecessary [LWN.net]

Seems unnecessary

Posted Mar 19, 2008 21:02 UTC (Wed) by jchrist (guest, #14782)
Parent article: Fedora's advice on GPL compliance

From the GPL, paragraph 3:

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

The internet is a medium customarily used for software interchange, and pointing users to the web site would seem to fulfill the requirements of the license here. There is no requirement that the source and the executables be on the type of media---that wouldn't even make sense. Although I'd like to get source code stored on an eeprom! Perhaps this is directed more at perception than reality, though.

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Seems unnecessary

Posted Mar 19, 2008 21:37 UTC (Wed) by mdomsch (subscriber, #5920) [Link]

Feel free to take this up with the FSF.  GPLv3 clarifies this point, GPLv2 is murky.  But
that's only part of the problem.  The real problem with paragraph 3b is the 3-year clock that
restarts every time someone hands out a DVD on behalf of the Project.  If 8 years from now,
someone who is a Fedora Ambassador and had a pile of leftover PPC DVDs gives them to Goodwill,
is Fedora still on the hook to provide source to Goodwill on request in 11 years?  Our legal
advice believes so.  With no way to 'time out' the continual restart of the 3-year clock,
there's no way to 'time out' the end of a 3b) obligation.

Seems unnecessary

Posted Mar 20, 2008 14:57 UTC (Thu) by rjbell4 (subscriber, #35764) [Link]

I think the person responsible would be the one performing the distribution.  That is, in the
example you mention, I suspect it would be the Fedora Ambassador handing out the DVDs, not the
Fedora Project itself.

Seems unnecessary

Posted Mar 20, 2008 16:28 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Legally yes but since Ambassadors are promoting the project, the project has some moral
responsibility to cover for their contributors.

Think about people from "other side"!

Posted Mar 21, 2008 9:07 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

The real problem with paragraph 3b is the 3-year clock that restarts every time someone hands out a DVD on behalf of the Project.

And this restart is very, VERY, VERY good.

If 8 years from now, someone who is a Fedora Ambassador and had a pile of leftover PPC DVDs gives them to Goodwill, is Fedora still on the hook to provide source to Goodwill on request in 11 years?

Stop. Answer simple question: why the hell Goodwill will even need this pile of obsolete binary packages in first place? Probably because their old systems are not supported by new, state-of-the-art distributions. But what if some error will be found in old packages after two years of use? What then? At that point packages are 10 years old - and probably noone have sources for them! Not even the RedHat (the story started with problems of keeping these sources around)! So now Goodwill is well and truly screwed...

Conclusion: the exact reason for inconvinience IS reason to demand sources in this way. If noone from RedHat keeps binaries around - no need to keep sources around. Bud when you decide that binaries must be gone, they should be gone. Destroyed. Burned. Crushed. Then 3 years later you'll be clear of the obligations (and if some employer will give out odd old package without company consent you can claim ignorance). Don't give people false hope - that's worse then nothing!