The FSF's being stupid again, it seems...

[Rob Landley]

On Wednesday 28 June 2006 8:51 pm, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:40:31 -0400
>
> Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
> > By harassing Mepis (and presumably others like them), as far as I can
> > tell the FSF is just making a neusance of itself, scaring people away
> > from using GPL software and trying to solve a non-problem.  I'm
> > curious what other people's opinions are.
>
> The FSF may also be looking to future lawsuits, in which, if they leave
> things go, a commercial entity doesn't give (exact) sources, and says
> that they don't have to, because of established common practise.

An svn snapshot and a release version are not the same thing.  BusyBox has 
regular releases.  Mepis is using Ubuntu releases.  The exact source has an 
existing cannonical high-bandwidth archive.  In the case of Mepis, Ubuntu is 
quite aware that Mepis is using them.  There were _press_releases_ to that 
effect from the Ubuntu guys.

> And is it really all that hard to keep the correct sources available?
> I mean if you're making a binary snapshot for a release, why not make a
> source snapshot as well (assuming you're modifying the source)?

I'm talking about unmodified source.  What part of "vanilla releases" did you 
miss?


> It may be inconvenient, but imnho it's the price you pay for being
> given the right to use GPL'd software, and I think it's just
> inconvenient, not some outrageous demand, and in fact I think it's a
> good thing.

I disagree with you because it's not what the license _SAYS_.  Stallman is 
trying to retroactively erase clause 3(b) of the license, and scare small 
fish away from 3(c).

> A while ago I was trying to put together an cd of open source software,
> with the right sources, so that I could deal with problems, even after
> upstream died (as seems to be common with windows ports of linux
> software, and less popular windows projects) and was astounded by the
> number of projects for which finding source code was a problem, even
> though supposedly gpl.  I started with a bunch of stuff from GnuWin,
> but they didn't have sources afaik, only pointed to upstream, which,
> less than three years later, were frequently dead and gone.

A) This is not a problem with sourceforge.

B) If they were noncommercial distribution they had every right to do that 
under clause 3(c) anyway.  No matter what Stallman says these days.

> As a gpl consumer I want the sources that will let me rebuild a given
> project (including installer, though that's more of an issue for
> windows, though I tend to question the usefulness of the gpl for
> software that depends on proprietary tools anyway, but I at least
> would like to be able to introduce friends to floss without insisting
> on them jumping to linux or bsd).

*shrug*  I really don't care about Windows.

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.