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| <p>The reason for the clarification of section 3 is that |
| <a href="http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/06/23/1728205&tid=150">what the FSF did to Mepis</a> was inexcusable. (Further discussed |
| in <a href="http://www.busybox.net/lists/busybox/2006-June/022797.html">this |
| thread</a>.)</p> |
| |
| <p>A small Linux distributor named Mepis (more or less a guy in his garage) |
| partnered with a big linux distributor called Ubuntu (multi-million dollar |
| company with offices in more than one country). Mepis put out a press release |
| quoting Ubuntu's founder about how cool the partnership was, and then Mepis |
| pointed to Ubuntu's source repository for GPL packages it was using unmodified |
| Ubuntu versions of. And the FSF went after them.</p> |
| |
| <p>As far as we're concerned, Mepis didn't do anything wrong, and the FSF |
| was a bully. The FSF was wrong when it tried to make an example out of a |
| company that was acting in good faith.</p> |
| |
| <p>To make sure the FSF doesn't pick on anyone else against our wishes, we're |
| clarifying that if you didn't modify the source code, and the binaries you're |
| distributing can be entirely regenerated from a public upstream source, |
| pointing to that upstream source in good faith is good enough for us. As |
| long as the upstream source don't doesn't object to the extra bandwidth, |
| and the correct source code stays available at that location you specify |
| for the duration of your responsiblity to redistribute source, life is good.</p> |
| |
| <p>There are a few common sense caveats. This doesn't mean it's fair for a |
| Fortune 500 company to point millions of people at somebody's home DSL line |
| (certainly not without asking first). And if the source that's available there |
| is not the complete corresponding source to the binaries you distributed, then |
| obviously you haven't fulfilled your obligations by pointing to some _other_ |
| source. (If you modified it, we want the patch, and claiming you didn't |
| modify it when you actually did would be fraud.) And if the code stops being |
| available at that location, you're not off the hook and have to find a new |
| location or put up your own mirror.</p> |
| |
| <p>So this is not a "get out of jail free" card: It's still your responsibility |
| to make the complete corresponding source available. We're just saying you can |
| reasonably delegate to something like Sourceforge or ibilbio, and as long as |
| everyone who wants the source can get it, we're happy. If the site you point |
| to objects or goes down, responsibility obviously reverts to you. But there |
| are plenty of high-bandwidth places that mirror open source for free these |
| days: sourceforge, OSL, ISC, ibiblio, archive.org, and so on.</p> |
| |
| <p>Oh, one last note: if people come to you asking "where's the source" |
| and your answer doesn't satisfy them, ask yourself "did I identify which |
| specific version I used, and if I didn't modify it at all did I explicitly |
| tell them this"? If you don't identify the source you used in enough detail |
| for open source developers to reproduce what you did, you haven't complied with |
| your license obligations yet. Identifying the specific source you used |
| is a very important part of the "written offer" bit that often gets |
| overlooked.</p> |
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