On Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:04:39 +1030 Karl Goetz <[email protected]> wrote:
> What does your upstream software distribution licence say? It has no specific license. However, central distribution specific tools, such as the package manager, are released under GPL 2. The upstream distribution doesn't provide sources of all software itself, only for the software which they wrote themself. You can get the sources through the ports like building system, which fetches them from somewhere else. > If upstreams source and yours match /exactly/ your statement might hold > true. if you package it in some form, you need to provide that somehow. After some thinking, I had another thought: What if upstream doesn't provide the source any more? In that case the source would actual be unavailable, effectively violating the GPL. After I checked the already built packages of ConnochaetOS I saw that is the case for some packages, because there is a newer version, and the source of the old version wasn't available any more. GPL 3 Section 6d states: If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements. Because noone can give an obligation for a server that is not under his control I now think, that indeed the sources must hosted by the project itself. I have made the sources available under http://www.connochaetos.org/os/src/ now. Kind regards, Henry
