On Thursday, October 2, 2003, at 06:39 PM, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
I've been staying out of this one, but I will clear this up. You're free
to do whatever you want with the SRPMS. Distributing the binary updates
that Red Hat delivers for RHEL is a no-no, but you can make your own
binaries from the SRPMS and build a pirate ship out of them if it makes
you happy.
We don't have to do this (SuSE doesn't do this for SLES). We're just that nice. :)
If you're just doing this to be nice, and SuSE "is not nice", how does SuSE publish the source files for the packages it uses? I believe this is a requirement of the GPL.
If you publish a product (sell it, whatever) where any portion of it uses GPL code, you must make freely available the full source of your product. I doubt that freely available means if you ask really nicely someone in Europe will send a CD.
I dont see how you "dont have to" do this. Your packages are often made according to rules listed in GPL'd spec files, which means you would have to publish those as well. There doesn't seem to be anything in a SRPM that you are not legally required to disclose under GPL.
Federico
Rocks Cluster Group, San Diego Supercomputing Center, CA
