Stale Fedora Hosted Projects (revisited)

[Matt Domsch]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 09:43:29AM -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
> > 
> > Given that we alone can think of a couple of arguments for or against
> > GPL distribution for 3 years or not, and there's other licenses as well,
> > this might be more appropriately handled by the legally literate people
> > (no offense to you, I just know I certainly am not)
> > 
> Definitely.  Especially since the base question isn't answered: Is
> fedorahosted responsible for satisfying the GPL clauses or is the
> upstream author who is responsible for the project hosted on
> fedorahosted responsible.

IANAL, but...

Whomever distributes the binaries is responsible for ensuring source
is available, either concurrently (ideally)(such as GPLv2 3a), or via
offer-to-provide-source-on-media (GPLv2 3b).

If binaries are not distributed from fedorahosted, then fedorahosted
is not responsible for providing source for any length of time.

If binaries _are_ distributed from fedorahosted, e.g. compiled bits
put into releases/, then I would expect fedorahosted to concurrently
carry the source code used to build those binaries.  Yes, this should
be fedorahosted policy.  It keeps us 100% out of the GPLv2 3b time
bomb.

I would not want to see us take on any obligation on behalf of another
party to keep source available for an undetermined length of time
without explicit intention to do so.  fedorahosted is for source.  If
someone downloads that source, distributes a binary to someone and claims
GPLv2 3c means that fedorahosted has to provide the source for them
for 3 years, they're wrong.

The three year clock is a crock.  If you don't know when the last time
you distributed binary under GPLv2 3b, then you can't know when the
clock starts, so you can't know when the clock ends.  Stay away from
it.  Seriously.

-Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Linux Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux