Question

Question

Posted Feb 17, 2004 22:10 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
In reply to: Question by ccyoung
Parent article: Allnet GmbH resolves iptables GPL violation

They must accept the GPL in order to duplicate it beyond fair use of a copy provided by a distributor, regardless of what they do with it. They therefore would have to reveal the source. On the other hand, it is not entirely obvious to whom they have to reveal the code. The GPL says (3, 3b):

You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
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

It therefore comes down to a question of to whom you are distributing the object code when you lease a piece of equipment to someone. If you are not distributing it to the user, then you only have to offer yourself the source (although if Allnet sells devices to ISPs to rent to ISP customers, they have to give the code to the ISPs). However, I think you are, in fact, considered to be distributing something if you rent it to someone.

The thing about internal use of modified GPL software is that you have to distribute the source, but you don't have to distribute it to anyone but yourself, so it doesn't matter much. (You never have to distribute source to the general public, but people generally find it easier than distributing it only to the necessary people, who can then distribute it more widely anyway).

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