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Obligations of noncommercial distributors

Obligations of noncommercial distributors

Posted Jun 11, 2010 9:16 UTC (Fri) by dark (subscriber, #8483)
Parent article: FSF takes on Apple's App Store over GPL

From the article: A download-only site like FileHippo should be in compliance provided that its binaries are unaltered; if the upstream source of the binary did not include a compliant source code offer, it would be the upstream source that is non-compliant.

I don't see how this follows from the GPL. A noncommercial distributor must still pass on the offer it received from its supplier. If it did not receive such an offer, then it cannot pass it on and it must not distribute the binary.

You're probably thinking of a slightly different case: if the supplier did include an offer of source code but does not honor it. Then the noncommercial distributor did satisfy its obligations and your reasoning does apply.


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Obligations of noncommercial distributors

Posted Jun 13, 2010 14:30 UTC (Sun) by Lefty (guest, #51528) [Link]

"dark" is correct: there's nothing in the GPL to suggest that one gets a pass because binaries are "unaltered". Apple didn't alter the binaries it received from Robota Softwarehouse, either.

Obligations of noncommercial distributors

Posted Jun 13, 2010 21:04 UTC (Sun) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

> Apple didn't alter the binaries it received from Robota Softwarehouse,
> either.

Doesn't it encrypt and sign them? So that they are Apple-DRM compliant?

jake

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