[Fwd: Wikipidia - Goodbye Red Hat and Fedora]

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 11:27 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 11:23 AM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 10:50 -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 01:38:44PM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I know the FSF-definition very well. They are defining free in the sense
>> >>>> of "open source"
>> >>>
>> >>> I don't think they agree with you there, in fact Richard would probably
>> >>> be most
>> >>> upset at such a claim...
>> >>
>> >> May-be, may-be not.
>> >>
>> >> Fact is: The GPL's notion of freedom is essentially covering freedom on
>> >> "source code". It's "viral" nature has has some implications on binaries
>> >> ("make source code available to customers"), but it nowhere states that
>> >> binaries having been built from GPL'ed sources must be "free-beer".
>> >
>> > There is no distinction between binaries and source in regard to the rights
>> > recipients have to redistribute them, except for the point that if you
>> > distribute binaries at all you must also make the corresponding source
>> > available to the recipeints.
>> >
>>
>> Do you have a lawyers advice on that? A courts decision on that?
> Yes, there have been cases in front of courts, where enterprises using
> "binaries having been built from GPL'ed sources" without offering their
> sources had been sued.
>

That is a completely different problem space. We aren't even talking
apples and oranges but apples and orangutans.

Red Hat gives out the source to its customers.. which it is legally
obligated to. AND gives the source to us freeloaders, which it is not
legally obligated to.

Red Hat gives out its binaries to its customers but does not give it
out to us freeloaders which it is not legally obligated to.. any more
than you are legally obligated to give me a peanut and butter sandwich
that you just made if I came to your door.

Red Hat makes an agreement with you that you will get their compiled
binaries from them for X dollars and a stipulation that says "if you
share the binaries, we will not give you updates anymore." Companies
from the beginning of the GPL have done this and have been told by the
authors of the GPL that this was well within the intent of the license
as it does not restrict the usage of the source code in any way.


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"