Re: "GPL requirement could have a chilling effect on derivative distros"

[Tom Shelton]

Merijn de Weerd wrote:
> On 2006-06-28, Karen Hill <karen_hill22@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > "I think, of the 500 distributions tracked by DistroWatch, probably 450
> > of them are in trouble right now per this position.", says  Warren
> > Woodford, founder of the Memphis Linux distro.
>
> How on earth is this news? This has been a requirement since 1991.
> You either bundle source, or you include a written offer at the
> cost of physical distribution. That's not hard.

I think the confusion about this was because this is a dirivative
distro...  And since they were distributing binaries that were
unchanged from the parent distro, they thought they were covered by the
fact that the parent distro offered source.  In other words, they were
only offering source for those binaries that they, in fact had changed.

I think the requirement as stated by the FSF is actually a good one
though, given the purpose of that license.  Simply because the parent
distro may change the source in such a way as that it no longer matches
the binary you distribute or the parent distro may cease to exist for
some reason.  For the record, I'm not saying that I actually agree with
the GPL - because in fact, I don't really believe that I do.

--
Tom Shelton