It's not so simple [LWN.net]

It's not so simple

Posted Mar 2, 2011 9:06 UTC (Wed) by airlied (subscriber, #9104)
In reply to: It's not so simple by paulj
Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

so if I download a tarball from kernel.org of Linus kernel, kernel.org is violating the GPL?

just because there is a git tree somewhere I can access if I want it doesn't change the fact that I was given a tarball which wasn't in what you are calling the preferred form.

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It's not so simple

Posted Mar 2, 2011 10:24 UTC (Wed) by maks (guest, #32426) [Link] (2 responses)

> so if I download a tarball from kernel.org of Linus kernel, kernel.org is
> violating the GPL?

The point beeing that linus doesn't really hide his git tree on kernel.org, whereas RH does. I'm pretty sure that you know that they didn't before, as up to RH 6.0 beta all patches are visible.

Wow. Talk about fogetting history.

Posted Mar 2, 2011 15:17 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

The point beeing that linus doesn't really hide his git tree on kernel.org, whereas RH does.

Well, Linus did that for a few years. It was not possible to get meta-information from bikeeper.com without agreeing to pretty onerous terms. Note that some developers refused to accept such terms - but none tried to imply that what Linus and other were doing is breach of the GPL!

Sorry, but this ship sailed long ago.

Wow. Talk about fogetting history.

Posted Mar 2, 2011 16:59 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

There may well be a difference between making available what you can versus, versus deliberately withholding things you have easily to hand (or not). The judicial system certainly can take intent into consideration, and does so as a matter of course.