Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 05:48:14PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> MJ Ray writes:
> >On 2004-07-19 11:38:23 +0100 Matthew Garrett
> ><mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> The GPL discriminates against people on
> >> desert islands who have a binary CD but not a source one.
> >
> >I must have missed that one. How?
>
> Easy - if you don't have the sources to those binaries, how can you
> meet the requirement to either provide the sources or offer to produce
> them within 3 years?
You can't, but this doesn't fail the desert island test. The core of
the desert island test, as I understand it, is that the critical freedoms
we expect for free software must be executable while on a desert island.
It's true that you couldn't distribute your CD of binaries to your desert
friend, but the fact that you're on a desert island is irrelevant to
that--the GPL wouldn't allow it even if you were at home.
--
Glenn Maynard
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