On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 10:25:40PM -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 08/16/2013 08:07 PM, Jorge Fábregas wrote:
On 08/16/2013 10:53 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
SUSE does not release their enterprise sources and there is no SLES clone because of it.
I can't believe I never thought about it (to wonder why there wasn't any SLES clone)...
Shouldn't they release the source for the GPL packages? I thought there was no way around it (and therefore that's why Red Hat had to do it).
- They only have to release Sources to the people who
they have given (sold) their software. They do not have to release them to the general public.
- Red Hat goes above and beyond this requirement, not
because they have to but because they want to.
Around the middle of section 4.1.2 here:
https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html
is explained that sources should be made available to anyone who has the binary code, not only direct customers:
«[...] v2 § 3(b) requires that offers be "to give any third party" a copy of the Corresponding Source. GPLv3 has a similar requirement, stating that an offer must be valid for "anyone who possesses the object code". These requirements indicated in v2 § 3(c) and v3 § 6(c) are so that non-commercial redistributors may pass these offers along with their distributions. Therefore, the offers must be valid not only to your customers, but also to anyone who received a copy of the binaries from them. Many distributors overlook this requirement and assume that they are only required to fulfill a request from their direct customers.»
Thus, the company can only find ways to restrict the (re)distribution of binaries in the first place to avoid that sources spread out. :-)
Mihai