RedHat SRPMS

[Federico Sacerdoti]

On Thursday, October 2, 2003, at 06:39 PM, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:

> I've been staying out of this one, but I will clear this up. You're 
> free
> to do whatever you want with the SRPMS. Distributing the binary updates
> that Red Hat delivers for RHEL is a no-no, but you can make your own
> binaries from the SRPMS and build a pirate ship out of them if it makes
> you happy.
>
> We don't have to do this (SuSE doesn't do this for SLES). We're just
> that nice. :)

If you're just doing this to be nice, and SuSE "is not nice", how does 
SuSE publish the source files for the packages it uses? I believe this 
is a requirement of the GPL.

If you publish a product (sell it, whatever) where any portion of it 
uses GPL code, you must make freely available the full source of your 
product. I doubt that freely available means if you ask really nicely 
someone in Europe will send a CD.

I dont see how you "dont have to" do this. Your packages are often made 
according to rules listed in GPL'd spec files, which means you would 
have to publish those as well. There doesn't seem to be anything in a 
SRPM that you are not legally required to disclose under GPL.

Federico

Rocks Cluster Group, San Diego Supercomputing Center, CA