Emacs and the GPL

Posted Aug 4, 2011 7:21 UTC (Thu) by Thue (guest, #14277)
Parent article: Emacs and the GPL

Smarty 3 in Debian (and Ubuntu) had the same problem: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=636148

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Emacs and the GPL

Posted Aug 4, 2011 10:03 UTC (Thu) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link] (3 responses)

It still has the problem. And it's release-critical and affects stable (I corrected the bug accordingly)

Emacs and the GPL

Posted Aug 4, 2011 10:38 UTC (Thu) by Thue (guest, #14277) [Link] (2 responses)

You wrote in the bug report that

> The problem here is that upstream is distributing created code without corresponding source code on their website.

but the source code is available from svn from the same download page which distributes the tarballs. (technically svn is at http://smarty-php.googlecode.com , but still arguably controlled by the person distributing the tarballs).

Isn't that good enough? As I wrote in the original bug report, you can get the source of fx 3.0.8 by doing

> svn export http://smarty-php.googlecode.com/svn/tags/Smarty_3_0_8/

Emacs and the GPL

Posted Aug 4, 2011 11:47 UTC (Thu) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link] (1 responses)

> but the source code is available from svn
> from the same download page which distributes
> the tarballs. (technically svn is at
> http://smarty-php.googlecode.com , but still
> arguably controlled by the person distributing
> the tarballs).

The problem here being that the SVN is on a different server, maintained by the Google people. Tarballs of the source need to be provided together with the non-source, or the non-source tarballs must contain at least an offer to offer the source code if requested.

6. [...]

c) Accompany the work with a written offer, valid for at
least three years, to give the same user the materials
specified in Subsection 6a, above, for a charge no more
than the cost of performing this distribution.

d) If distribution of the work is made by offering access to copy
from a designated place, offer equivalent access to copy the above
specified materials from the same place.

They should fix this by offering source code tarballs as well, we require them for Debian anyway (and other distributions probably do so as well).

Emacs and the GPL

Posted Aug 4, 2011 12:46 UTC (Thu) by Thue (guest, #14277) [Link]

> The problem here being that the SVN is on a different server, maintained by the Google people. Tarballs of the source need to be provided together with the non-source, or the non-source tarballs must contain at least an offer to offer the source code if requested.

The keyword here is "same place". I would argue that since both the tarballs and svn is available from the same download page, then the source is available from the "same place". Nowhere does the GPL say that the source has to be available as a tarball.

The svn repository is administered by the smarty developer, but hosted by Google. The smarty.net webpage is also administered by the smarty developer, but perhaps actually hosted in some datacenter, or on a rented virtual server. As long as the top layer of control is the Smarty developer, then it seems good enough according to my reading of the GPL.