Mercurial > hg > toybox
annotate www/licenserant.html @ 332:d3f85181d882
Fix the old dead link about mepis with one from linux.com. (Thanks Christian Holtje.)
| author | Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> |
|---|---|
| date | Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:19:43 -0600 |
| parents | 6aac63925eff |
| children | f7780b485e6f |
| rev | line source |
|---|---|
| 226 | 1 <!--#include file="header.html" --> |
| 2 | |
| 3 <p>The reason for the clarification of section 3 is that | |
|
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d3f85181d882
Fix the old dead link about mepis with one from linux.com. (Thanks Christian Holtje.)
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
226
diff
changeset
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4 <a href="http://www.linux.com/articles/55285">what the FSF did to Mepis</a> was inexcusable. (Further discussed |
| 226 | 5 in <a href="http://www.busybox.net/lists/busybox/2006-June/022797.html">this |
| 6 thread</a>.)</p> | |
| 7 | |
| 8 <p>A small Linux distributor named Mepis (more or less a guy in his garage) | |
| 9 partnered with a big linux distributor called Ubuntu (multi-million dollar | |
| 10 company with offices in more than one country). Mepis put out a press release | |
| 11 quoting Ubuntu's founder about how cool the partnership was, and then Mepis | |
| 12 pointed to Ubuntu's source repository for GPL packages it was using unmodified | |
| 13 Ubuntu versions of. And the FSF went after them.</p> | |
| 14 | |
| 15 <p>As far as we're concerned, Mepis didn't do anything wrong, and the FSF | |
| 16 was a bully. The FSF was wrong when it tried to make an example out of a | |
| 17 company that was acting in good faith.</p> | |
| 18 | |
| 19 <p>To make sure the FSF doesn't pick on anyone else against our wishes, we're | |
| 20 clarifying that if you didn't modify the source code, and the binaries you're | |
| 21 distributing can be entirely regenerated from a public upstream source, | |
| 22 pointing to that upstream source in good faith is good enough for us. As | |
|
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d3f85181d882
Fix the old dead link about mepis with one from linux.com. (Thanks Christian Holtje.)
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
226
diff
changeset
|
23 long as the upstream source doesn't object to the extra bandwidth, |
| 226 | 24 and the correct source code stays available at that location you specify |
| 25 for the duration of your responsiblity to redistribute source, life is good.</p> | |
| 26 | |
| 27 <p>There are a few common sense caveats. This doesn't mean it's fair for a | |
| 28 Fortune 500 company to point millions of people at somebody's home DSL line | |
| 29 (certainly not without asking first). And if the source that's available there | |
| 30 is not the complete corresponding source to the binaries you distributed, then | |
| 31 obviously you haven't fulfilled your obligations by pointing to some _other_ | |
| 32 source. (If you modified it, we want the patch, and claiming you didn't | |
| 33 modify it when you actually did would be fraud.) And if the code stops being | |
| 34 available at that location, you're not off the hook and have to find a new | |
| 35 location or put up your own mirror.</p> | |
| 36 | |
| 37 <p>So this is not a "get out of jail free" card: It's still your responsibility | |
| 38 to make the complete corresponding source available. We're just saying you can | |
| 39 reasonably delegate to something like Sourceforge or ibilbio, and as long as | |
| 40 everyone who wants the source can get it, we're happy. If the site you point | |
| 41 to objects or goes down, responsibility obviously reverts to you. But there | |
| 42 are plenty of high-bandwidth places that mirror open source for free these | |
| 43 days: sourceforge, OSL, ISC, ibiblio, archive.org, and so on.</p> | |
| 44 | |
| 45 <p>Oh, one last note: if people come to you asking "where's the source" | |
| 46 and your answer doesn't satisfy them, ask yourself "did I identify which | |
| 47 specific version I used, and if I didn't modify it at all did I explicitly | |
| 48 tell them this"? If you don't identify the source you used in enough detail | |
| 49 for open source developers to reproduce what you did, you haven't complied with | |
| 50 your license obligations yet. Identifying the specific source you used | |
| 51 is a very important part of the "written offer" bit that often gets | |
| 52 overlooked.</p> | |
| 53 | |
| 54 <!--#include file="footer.html" --> |