On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 10:25:40PM -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 08/16/2013 08:07 PM, Jorge Fábregas wrote:
> > On 08/16/2013 10:53 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> >> SUSE does not release their enterprise sources and there
> >> is no SLES clone because of it.
> > I can't believe I never thought about it (to wonder why there wasn't any
> > SLES clone)...
> >
> > Shouldn't they release the source for the GPL packages? I thought there
> > was no way around it (and therefore that's why Red Hat had to do it).
>
> 1. They only have to release Sources to the people who
> they have given (sold) their software. They do not have to
> release them to the general public.
>
> 2. Red Hat goes above and beyond this requirement, not
> because they have to but because they want to.
Around the middle of section 4.1.2 here:
https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html
is explained that sources should be made available to anyone
who has the binary code, not only direct customers:
«[...] v2 § 3(b) requires that offers be "to give
any third party" a copy of the Corresponding Source.
GPLv3 has a similar requirement, stating that an offer
must be valid for "anyone who possesses the object code".
These requirements indicated in v2 § 3(c) and v3 § 6(c)
are so that non-commercial redistributors may pass these
offers along with their distributions. Therefore, the
offers must be valid not only to your customers, but also
to anyone who received a copy of the binaries from them.
Many distributors overlook this requirement and assume
that they are only required to fulfill a request from
their direct customers.»
Thus, the company can only find ways to restrict the
(re)distribution of binaries in the first place to avoid that
sources spread out. :-)
Mihai
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