[CentOS] FYI: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Release Candidate Available to Partners

Jerry Franz jfranz at freerun.com
Tue Oct 19 11:52:46 UTC 2010


  On 10/19/2010 04:16 AM, Karanbir Singh wrote:
> hi Guys,
>
> On 10/19/2010 12:00 PM, Benjamin Franz wrote:
>> I'm pretty sure Deyan is referring to their GPL obligations to make the
>> source code available for most of it.
> .. this has nothing to do with it...
>

Yes, it does.

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html

"Second, note that the last line makes the offer valid to anyone who 
requests the source. This is because 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. "

Once you publish/distribute GPL licensed code to *anyone*, your 
obligation to provide source kicks in for *everyone*. In practice, few 
people hammer at a company "in process" over it. But you *can*.

-- 
Benjamin Franz



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