[Grub4dos-devel] licensing and source code
Michael Reichenbach
The following message is from Jim Hall from the FreeDOS project. NOT
from me.
His mail adress is: jhall at freedos.org
You can also reach him on the FreeDOS mailing list.
-mr
Hi. I just grabbed the latest version of Grub4dos to look at it. You
need to distribute source code for this, at the same time you release
the binary. You acknowledge that Grub4dos is a fork of Grub, so must
follow the GNU GPL. But you do not abide by it here.
Section 3 of the GNU GPL (see "COPYING" in your grub4dos-0.4.3.zip file)
says:
>>>>>> >>>>>>
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software
interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form with such
an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
<<<<<<
In your grub4dos-0.4.3.zip file, there is no source code. But there is
a Get_Source_of_This_Build.txt file that says you can get the source
code through SVN at gna.org. This does not meet 3a or 3b. You need to
include the sources, either inside the grub4dos-0.4.3.zip file or as a
grub4dos-src-0.4.3.zip file.
-jh
Yes, please re-post my message to their mailing list for me, that
would be great. You can certainly include my email address for
followup if you like.
Basically, I'm trying to alert them that they need to distribute
source code at the same time they distribute the binary - according to
the GNU GPL. It's a big deal for people like me who may want to
include their project in our distribution, or mirror it on our web
site, etc. but cannot because the complete source code to the binary
doesn't exist.
It's not the same to just include a reference for how to fetch the
source code from their svn repository. Some users may not have an svn
client, or may not know how to use it. In any case, I do not believe
the svn instruction they provided in their txt file gave me all the
source code for that version (may have been an older tag, for
example.) Some files appeared to be missing.
Thanks,
-jh
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