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preferred form

Posted Mar 9, 2011 10:51 UTC (Wed) by wingo (guest, #26929)
Parent article: Red Hat and the GPL

The GPL says:

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.

Surely if we consider the work to be the Linux kernel, then the source of the Linux kernel is the preferred form for modifications to it, and not the patches that make it up, a dump of the filesystem it is stored on, etc.

I do not understand the objection that separate patches are necessary to comply with the GPL, as the patches are not the work in consideration: the source code is.

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preferred form

Posted Mar 9, 2011 15:23 UTC (Wed) by __alex (subscriber, #38036) [Link]

Some people seem to think that the change to the source distribution effects their rights under freedom 1 ("The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish") of the FSF philosophy, which is what the GPL is meant to represent through copyright law.

I think any argument that they are breaking the word of the GPL with this change is pretty tenuous but I can understand why people are a bit upset about it. Also people love to rage about things and GPL compliance is easy to bikeshed over.