ASUS SplashTop and Phoenix Hyperspace infringing kernel copyright and GPL

[Stan Cunningham]

--- On Tue, 5/20/08, Joshua J. Kugler <joshua at eeinternet.com> wrote:
> From: Joshua J. Kugler <joshua at eeinternet.com>
> Subject: Re: ASUS SplashTop and Phoenix Hyperspace infringing kernel copyright and GPL
> To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
> Date: Tuesday, May 20, 2008, 7:45 PM
> On Tuesday 20 May 2008, mr said something like:
> > http://www.splashtop.com/developer.php
> >
> > you can download the source code after filling out
> this form.
> 
> Yes, that may be true, but remember a while back when the
> FSF went 
> after "downstream" distributions for not
> distributing source code when 
> they distributed (unmodified) Debian binaries?  It would
> seem that in 
> this case, ASUS needs to distribute the source code as
> well, or they 
> are in violation of the GPL as well.

That's right. If ASUS is the one distributing a binary derived from GPLv2-ed code, ASUS needs to host the source code themselves. Whether or not DeviceVM is distributing the source code is irrelevant: DeviceVM is only obligated to give the source code to their customer, which in this case is ASUS.

Thanks,
Stan