Fedora Board Recap 2007-NOV-13

Jeroen van Meeuwen kanarip at kanarip.com
Wed Nov 21 18:51:02 UTC 2007


Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:51:40 +0100
> Jeroen van Meeuwen <kanarip at kanarip.com> wrote:
> 
>> What's this? Should I now say: "Please do 3b/c because it's money
>> better spent then trying to avoid it at all costs" ??
> 
> I have no idea how to parse that.
> 
> In my opinion, targetting 3b/c is very dangerous for Fedora as an
> upstream, as it is entirely too vague and could easily land us in a
> trap where every single source ever to pass through our build system
> must be always available in the same location from now until
> eternity.  /That/ is what I'd like to avoid.
> 

Right, even in more realistic extremes that is a situation we need to 
avoid, but that doesn't mean we should abandon the option on beforehand.

GPLv2 3b/c says you put out an offer in which the instructions are to 
obtain the sources and that any non-commercial party can forward that 
offer. So, if that offer says:

"The sources of Fedora 8 and it's updates are available as of November 
8th 2007, for a period of 4 years and one month, to be downloaded from 
d.f.r.c" -obviously without the legal speak...

then what is so dangerous?

How can something you say you find so vague and without any real 
precedence be so dangerous if complied upon? - This may be my ignorance 
speaking, but it's a serious question; I don't see it.

At the very least we could be looking at answering two questions:

1) What's the deal with GPLv2 3b, can we use it for released 
non-development stuff (built, signed and pushed out to the mirrors) only 
and let the rest be as it is now.

2) Can we distribute under the more explicit GPLv3 and what would be 
it's best option.

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen




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