MEPIS and GPL Compliance [LWN.net]

MEPIS Linux (home of SimplyMEPIS and MEPISLite) is a fairly popular Debian-based distribution company. With the recent release of SimplyMEPIS 6.0, a MEPIS transitioned from using Debian packages to using Ubuntu (actually Kubuntu as MEPIS is KDE-centric) packages.

MEPIS has typically used binary packages straight from the parent repository for large parts of the system. They never carried the source code for these unaltered packages. For packages that they did alter, such as the MEPIS kernel, they have always made the source code available. However that doesn't conform to the letter of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, the license used by many of the packages found in SimplyMEPIS. The GPL v2 states:

3. 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:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

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.)

Sending people to the parent source repository is not good enough, although they got away with it for some time. So MEPIS has now announced a full GPL source release. There are some interesting comments in the associated GPL compliance FAQ, however.

MEPIS now offers all source code on 2 DVDs available though the MEPIS Store.

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