[nycbug-talk] Re: wasabi

[Johnny Lam]

Marco Scoffier wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 23, 2006 at 02:06:28PM -0500, Marc Spitzer wrote:
> <snip>
> 
>>But once you have shipped one copy your customer can demand a copy of
>>the source, which you must provide, and put it up on source forge for
>>all the world to download.
>>
> 
> Is this one of the loopholes which is being fixed ?  Sounds like FUD,
> but I don't know for sure.

I don't know what you mean by "loophole".  The basic principles behind 
the GPL is that anyone who gets the binary distribution of a piece of 
software must be able to get the sources, and that anyone can 
redistribute that software.  The GPL takes a while to explain precisely 
this, but that's the general aim.

This applies to your example in that your customer, to whom you've sold 
your GPLed software (binary + sources), can now freely distribute the 
exact same binary and sources according to the GPL.  Which means, as 
Marc pointed out, they can upload it to SourceForge and let anyone 
download it.

	Cheers,

	-- Johnny Lam <jlam at pkgsrc.org>