On Sun, 3 Dec 2006, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
Peter wrote:
On Sat, 2 Dec 2006, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
A small Linux distro often does not have the resources to put up a
full source tree.
yes, I know. However, for all practical purposes, the license does not
consider this. I'm not even sure it could if it wanted to.
Really ? Why would it. After all, Linux source contributors are all
billionaires secretly hoarding $$$, yachts and blondes. They wear old
pullovers and sneakers with holes at conventions to confuse the public.
And beards so they can fool groceries about their age and buy beer to go
with the pizza.
In theory linking to the source tree stored elsewhere and supplying a
diff against that should be enough.
I'm not sure you are right.
Neither am I but WHERE DOES IT SAY THE MODS SOURCE AND THE ORIGINAL
SOURCE MUST BE ON THE SAME SERVER ? (actually it is worse than that,
see below)
The GPL has one aim in mind - maintaining the software's freedom.
Imagine the following scenario:
1. Party A rolls out a new Linux distribution. Many of utilities on the
distribution are unmodified, and so it says "just download them from X".
2. A's distro becomes popular.
3. One of the upstream providers goes bankrupt, and so has to pull his
stuff off the web.
Effectively, A are now violating the GPL, despite not doing anything to
cause 3. 3 can happen in lots of other ways. For example, upstream
decides that the version in question has become too old, and replaces it
with a new one.
This logic is sick. Obviously the downstream people will do something
in this case. It has happened before and it will happen again. If there
is enough interest then a 'fork' and freeze occurs for the data from the
'defunct' distributor.
This GPL article comes in to prevent this scenario. If you distribute
the binary, you have the legal obligation to give the source. You cannot
off-load this obligation to anyone else.
ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY THAT THE SOURCES FOR THE MODIFICATIONS MUST BE ON
THE SAME SERVER WITH THE 6GB OF SOURCES FOR THE REST OF THE SYSTEM, YES
OR NO ? AND IF YOU SAY THAT, WHO MANDATED YOU TO SAY IT ?
When I made a single floppy linux demo ten years ago and uploaded it
to sunsite I got a request for source (it was clearly stated on the
floppy how it was made). I answered the email with the same
description (take 1.2.13 source tree, apply patch by Petri Matilla
(sp?), compile, copy binaries from list into image, dd kernel and
image to disk and you are done). The 'answer' was that the floppy
image was deleted from sunsite (I could have supplied more exact
instructions if asked - but I was not asked). I used it for ten years.
At the time I had 33600 modem access only and I used to run up 200NIS
bills for Internet alone, plus phone costs. There was no way I could
offer a full source mirror and sending source CDs out abroad would
have bankrupted me (I did not own a burner then).
You could have asked for S&H fees. It's right there in the license.
I was not in a position to ask for anything. At the time my S&H fee
would have included a cd burner and I had exactly one request for
source: from the b**** who then deleted the image from sunsite. Not only
that but I got a comment from tomsrbt I think, that it was 'just a
script'. Obviously it was a script, the demo had an easy menu system, it
was meant for first time users who take an intro Unix course. That was
its purpose. An easy menu that explains everything and then drops into a
shell so the exercises from the book can be worked.
If the cleverness of the guardian dogs of open source consists in
making sure that aggregators and contributors have at least 5GB
storage and 500GB/month transfer for something that used to fit on two
floppies (never mind one) ten years ago then they are not clever. And
those who are not aggregators or never created or contributed (to) any
projects and just bark along are just dogs imho.
What about people who are neither?
Those would be users. Where exactly are you on this ? Did you contribute
to some project ?
The thing is, as has come up before, no one has EVER revoked a GPL
license due to this clause. The fact remains that it's still there, and
there for good reasons.
I know, but deleting a diskette image has been done before. A diskette
image that was uploaded at the cost of sweat and blood in about 5 or 6
tries, and it took 12 minutes each try.
If this is a bandwidth-pissing contest I want to know now.
No, it's a question of freedom, just like (most of) the rest of the GPL.
So you are free to pay through the nose for bandwidth or keep your
patches and demos for yourself ? Good to know. But do you mind if I'll
ask a couple more people before I draw conclusions ?
Just for the record: sunsite where I uploaded that demo in 1996 or 97
had the full sources for the relevant kernel on that server, and the
patch I had used was also somewhere up there, or I could have uploaded
it. It was not small but I would have tried.
Peter
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