Approval for Introducing Your Software in Japanese PC magazine

[John Ralls]

On Apr 28, 2013, at 7:06 AM, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 28 April 2013 14:48, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>> 
>> On Apr 28, 2013, at 1:14 AM, Graham Leggett <minfrin at sharp.fm> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 28 Apr 2013, at 04:45, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> The rules say that you have to distribute all of the source code, but I think that it's become
>>>> pretty common to rely on the fact that the sources are all readily available via the net. You'll
>>>> probably want to get an OK from your lawyers.
>>> 
>>> The rules say that if you make changes to the code, you must make those changes to the source available under the same license.
>>> 
>>> If you don't make changes to the code, for example you just publish the binaries as provided, then just link back to the source here.
>>> 
>>> The source doesn't need to be on the same physical medium, but does need to be available. An example might be binaries on an operating system CD, with source available via the operating system website.
>> 
>> Wrong.
>> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#TOCUnchangedJustBinary
> 
> Just to clarify that, I don't think it means that you have to supply
> the sources on the same medium at the same time, just that you have to
> be able to supply the sources if someone requires it.  If I get a
> Ubuntu CD from Canonical (a CD not a download), which includes
> gnucash, they do not have to supply the source at the same time.  It
> has to be available if I ask for it however.  Also if I insist on
> getting the source on CD then they can make a reasonable charge for it
> I believe.

Yes, they say exactly that in another question in the FAQ. However, simply linking back to our (and Gnome's, Freedesktop's, Gnu's, etc.) is specifically not adequate -- which of course means that we're in violation for our Mac and Win32 distributions, since we don't host mirrors for all of those sources, nor does SourceForge. Note that the Lesser GPL doesn't relax that provision, it only relaxes the derivative work provision.

The other thing is that the license doesn't say anything about changed source in that part. If you distribute a GPL binary you must also be prepared to distribute the source, regardless of whether you made changes.

Regards,
John Ralls