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Red Hat and the GPLRed Hat and the GPLPosted Mar 10, 2011 3:03 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533)In reply to: Red Hat and the GPL by rahvin Parent article: Red Hat and the GPL This clause exists in the GPL to prevent some company from sending you a printed book of source code. No, it doesn't. The GPL deals with that using the "on a medium customarily used for software interchange" language. The specification that the source be the 'preferred form for modification" is a separate requirement, and is about what does and does not count as 'source', not about the media via which it is delivered.
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Red Hat and the GPL Posted Mar 18, 2011 18:48 UTC (Fri) by mishad (guest, #69757) [Link]
Agreed.
To know for sure we'd have to ask the GPL's original authors, but my reading of it was that the term was added to ensure that the right to produce modified works could be meaningfully exercised. In particular, it was to preclude distribution of "source" that was obfuscated (e.g. variable names changed, no whitespace, no comments, replace control structures with equivalent gotos) or which was already compiled (e.g. as "binary blobs" which form part of the resulting program/work).
I don't think anyone was thinking about VCSen back then.
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