RE: freebox possible GPL violation

[David Schwartz]

> On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 14:02 +0200, Emmanuel Fleury wrote:
> > Arjan van de Ven wrote:

> > > that's not enough to satisfy the GPL conditions.

> > It is.

>   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;

	The Internet is a medium customarily used for software interchange, in
fact, it is most likely the most popular medium for that purpose. At the
time the GPL was written (June 1991), it arguably was not. So you will see a
lot of arguments that including a URL was not sufficient. However, now that
the Internet is the most popular medium for software interchange, offering a
URL is actually the *best* way to make the source code available.

	Anyone who argues otherwise is just looking to make trouble for no reason
whatsoever. There is no medium you could possibly include that is more
likely to be usable than a URL. The intent of this paragraph was that the
software be available and easily accessible. A URL does this better than
anything else.

	DS


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