[ILUG] Re: GPL and Apple (was Red Hat in Easons ? ?)

[Rick Moen]

begin Dave Airlie quotation:

[MacOS X CDs not including source code:]
 
> you don't have to provide the source on the CD or anywhere near the
> distribution.. you don't have to provide the source to everyone in the
> world.. i.e. I can't get the Apple gcc source by asking them for it,...
> 
> why?

Some background:  Apple OS X consists of the PPC-binary version of an 
open-sourced BSD OS called "Darwin", plus a number of proprietary
userspace packages at the application and presentation layers -- 
MS Internet Explorer, a print engine, the Quartz/Aqua graphics layers,
some multimedia tools, and so on.

Darwin (available as both PPC and x86 ports) has pretty much the same
mix of open-source licences as, say, NetBSD, with around six
exceptions.  I keep a copy of the x86 port in my kit of CD-ROMs for
Linux/BSD installfests, and am in fact just about to pull down an
ISO9660 image of the new v. 1.4.1.

Darwin's "xnu" kernel is APSL-licensed -- in part.  (Don't forget               
there's Mach microkernel code from CMU in there, and also BSD code.) 

Darwin Streaming Server is APSL.  Code for the Common Data Security
Architecture, and for the OpenPlay and NetSprocket abstraction layers
is APSL, as is a small developer tool called HeaderDoc. 

But, anyhow, most certainly you _can_ get the source code matching
the gcc binary Apple make available.  Apple must provide such access,
per the package's licence terms, to anyone who who wishes, an obligation
they incurred when they distributed the binary.  Current version is
here:  http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/1.4/projects.html 

Many of the licences for packages comprising Darwin don't carry any
obligation of source code access, but Apple provide such access anyway.
Further, their policy has been -- consistently, to my knowledge -- to 
contribute back source code changes to the upstream maintainers under
the upstream licences.  (E.g., when they modify a BSD-licensed codebase,
they furnish their source modifications to the codebase maintainer under
BSD terms.)

-- 
"Is it not the beauty of an asynchronous form of discussion that one can go and 
make cups of tea, floss the cat, fluff the geraniums, open the kitchen window 
and scream out it with operatic force, volume, and decorum, and then return to 
the vexed glowing letters calmer of mind and soul?" -- The Cube, forum3000.org