From: David Golden (david.golden at domain oceanfree.net)
Date: Wed 03 Oct 2001 - 10:59:36 IST
On Wednesday 03 October 2001 10:11, Liam Bedford wrote:
> You don't get the source, but I'm sure Apple have
> figgered a way out of that one).
Well, GPL source doesn't *have* to be published as a nice tarball on the
internet - all the license says is that the source has to be made publically
available - AFAIK, an offer to mail the source on a few floppies
or burned onto a CD to someone upon request still suffices to fulfil the
terms of distribution, as they each also qualify as a "medium customarily
used for software interchange". You're even allowed charge a small fee for
the cost of the media and distribution. GNU software used to come on tapes,
in the days before internet access was widespread...
These days, of course, releasing the source on the internet has
by far the least overhead of any method - and if, for some bizarre reason,
the original author doesn't post the source on the internet, then a third
party is still entitled to.
Seee GPL v2, section 3 b and c :
3 b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
3 c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form with such
an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
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