Lindsay Haisley writes: > > but if they're going to make modifications to it, they need to share > > those modifications back with us > > Doesn't their failure to do so violate the GPL?
No. The GPL requires that you grant certain rights to use of your code to downstream recipients, not that you publish code or give it back to upstream developers. It's failure to provide source code to paying customers (even if the price was zero) that violates the GPL. If one of us is willing to buy a server system and demand source code, they either cough up or they suffer a rerun of the Objective-C embarrassment, and then they either cough up anyway or they lose the right to distribute Mailman. Alternatively, if somebody knows somebody with a server system who's willing to piss off Apple, the first somebody could get the second somebody to do it. This has been done in other contexts (the cPanel Mailman patch was outed at least once by a customer, and maybe Plesk's, too), but the history with Apple seems to go like this: 1. Bug bites Mac server system's Mailman. 2. Victim wastes time talking to Apple. By the time they realize it is a waste of time, they're panicking. 3. Willing to do anything, they come here and are advised to install Mailman from source as described in our INSTALL file. (This advice was especially effective when coming from Chuq. :-) 4. Victim discovers there's nothing they want from the Apple version, and by the time they've put out all the other little fires that sprang up while they were fighting the Mailman fire, they cool off enough to realize there's nothing to benefit *anybody* in the Apple version, and it would be best if it just went away, so they don't bother asking for code. ;-) Steve ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org