From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1025b4,1d8ab55e71d08f3d X-Google-Attributes: gid1025b4,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,1efdd369be089610 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: mdw@venus.ebi.ac.uk (Mark Wooding) Subject: Re: what DOES the GPL really say? Date: 1997/09/08 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 270767404 References: <5ph4g5$sbs$1@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> <5uhe6s$g8q@taurus.ftl.telematics.com> <5uhjr4$i2o@idiom.com> <5uirfo$lt2@taurus.ftl.telematics.com> Organization: MRC Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Centre Reply-To: mdw@ebi.ac.uk Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss Date: 1997-09-08T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert Dewar wrote: > By what standards, the GPL does not say that it has to be super easy to > get the sources, the only restriction it places is that you cannot charge > more than a copying fee for them, but it would certainly be in bounds to > say that the sources are available on request on CD ROM for a payment of > $X with a delivery time of Y weeks (as long as X and Y were reasonable, > where the only person who gets to complain about reasonable is the > copyright holder Which GPL did you read? The one I've got here says: 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: ... b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, ... The `cost of physically performing source distribution' sounds a good deal less than `reasonable, where the only person who gets to complain about reasonable is the copyright holder' to me. Perhaps this is just me getting things wrong, but charging much more than media and postage costs for a source distribution looks like a violation of the licence to me. I suspect that the intent behind the words of this particular section is to ensure that once you've got a distribution of GPL-ed-program `foo' of any kind, you shouldn't have to pay any more for the /right/ to have the sources for `foo', but only for the physical process of getting hold of the appropriate data. (This is dangerous territory, and I know it: trying to read between the lines of a document as carefully worded as the GPL is tricky.) -- [mdw] `It can't rain all the time.' -- Eric Draven