ASUS SplashTop and Phoenix Hyperspace infringing kernel copyright and GPL

Chris DiBona cdibona at gmail.com
Wed May 21 18:41:57 CEST 2008


I hate to disagree (well, I don't) but start citing sections. There is
no such clause in GPLv2. Please read all of section 3. Note it says
"one of the following" and section b is what I'm talking about.

There is nothing wrong with holding people to the license, that's an
important thing to do, but just making up things is wrong.

Chris

  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:

    a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
    source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
    1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software
    interchange; or,

    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,

    c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
    to distribute corresponding source code.  (This alternative is
    allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
    received the program in object code or executable form with such
    an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 7:29 AM, Armijn Hemel <armijn at uulug.nl> wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 14:58 +0200, Imre Kaloz wrote:
>> >> The license would only allow that in certain circumstances (GPLv2,
>> >> section 3c). The GPLv2 license talks about 'complete corresponding
>> >> source code', 'source code', etc., but nothing about patches.
>> >
>> > I do not think it's compliant with GPLv2 to only distribute patches
>> > and refer people to the original source. You have to make available
>> > source for anything you distribute in binary form.
>>
>>
>> Read the GPL. That option is only valid if you are a non-commercial
>> project/entity.
>> Companies have to provide the full source code.
>
> I think that is exactly what Arnoud said :-)
>
> armijn
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> armijn at uulug.nl | http://www.uulug.nl/ | UULug: Utrecht Linux Users Group
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>



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Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.
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