[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Bug#334452: marked as done (debian-cd: Debian-cd website offers binaries but not sources, violating GPL)

Your message dated Sat, 7 Nov 2009 21:14:53 +0100
with message-id <20091107201453.GA27135@dedibox.ebzao.info>
and subject line Re: Bug#334452: debian-cd: Debian-cd website offers binaries but not sources, violating GPL
has caused the Debian Bug report #334452,
regarding debian-cd: Debian-cd website offers binaries but not sources, violating GPL
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact owner@bugs.debian.org
immediately.)


-- 
334452: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=334452
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Subject: debian-cd: Debian-cd website offers binaries but not sources, violating GPL
Package: debian-cd
Severity: serious
Justification: Policy 2.1 "The program must include source code"

I'm looking for the source code that matches the binary releases that
Debian provides.  It is not in an obvious place.  There is no "written
offer of source code" as required by the GPL when you distribute binaries
without sources, nor are the sources available "next to" the binaries
online.

>From the root of the Debian distribution, http://www.debian.org, I
followed the sidebar link "Getting Debian: CD ISO images" to
http://www.debian.org/CD/ .  From there I followed the links to
"Download CD images with jigdo" and also "Download CD images with
BitTorrent".  I'll follow these one by one below.

Jigdo:  http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/

The page contains all these offers of binary files:

Official images

    * Official jigdo files for the "stable" release on CD:
      [alpha] [arm] [hppa] [i386] [ia64] [m68k] [mips] [mipsel] [powerpc] [sparc] [s390]
    * Official jigdo files for the "stable" release on DVD:
      [alpha] [arm] [hppa] [i386] [ia64] [m68k] [mips] [mipsel] [powerpc] [sparc] [s390]

But it contains no links at all to "[source]" to get the Source CDs or
DVDs.  By messing with the URLs provided under these links, I
determined that Source CD jigdos/templates are actually being
generated -- but there are no links to them.  For example, the [i386]
DVD is at this URL:

  http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/jigdo-dvd/

If I replace "i386" with "source" in that URL:

  http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/source/jigdo-dvd/

then I find the appropriate files.  The fix is to simply add a
"[source]" link that goes to that URL.  (You can't expect an ordinary
user to start hacking up the URLs hidden behind the links in order to
get access to the sources that the GPL requires Debian to provide.)
There should be two [source] links, one for DVDs and one for CDs.

BitTorrent:  http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/

Same thing.  It lists:

  # Official torrents for the stable release on CD
  [alpha] [arm] [hppa] [i386] [ia64] [m68k] [mips] [mipsel] [powerpc] [sparc] [s390]
  # Official torrents for the stable release on DVD
  [i386] [powerpc]

But there's no [source] link.  Here, [i386] on DVD links to:

  http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r0a/i386/bt-dvd/

Changing that to:

  http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r0a/source/bt-dvd/

That file doesn't exist.  However, there is an offer of source on CD
(not DVD) via BitTorrent:

  http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r0a/source/bt-cd

The fix is to create a [source] link that goes there from the list of CD
releases.  (And ideally to create a [source] link in the DVD releases,
that leads to a newly generated set of bt-dvd source Torrents.)

I've been surprised at the degree to which Debian users seem oblivious
to the existence or nonexistence source code.  They blithely install
binary packages with the same abandon as Microsoft users.  The reason
I want to get Source CDs now is because I frequently find that source
packages that match my installed binaries have been withdrawn from the
mirrors or are otherwise not available when I want/need them.  It's
particularly ironic that Debian, the most conscientious creators of
truly-free-like-free-speech Linux distributions are so lax when it
comes to actually following the GPL and making the source code
available to recipients of binary releases.  Thanks for making these
simple fixes to your web pages.

	John Gilmore

PS:  There's a minor error in http://www.debian.org/CD/; it says
that jigdo is "is the only way to download Debian DVD images."  That
is no longer true now that Torrents of (some) DVDs are available.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.11-1-k7-smp
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
On Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 05:00:39PM -0700, John Gilmore wrote:
> I'm looking for the source code that matches the binary releases that
> Debian provides.  It is not in an obvious place.  There is no "written
> offer of source code" as required by the GPL when you distribute binaries
> without sources, nor are the sources available "next to" the binaries
> online.
> 
> >From the root of the Debian distribution, http://www.debian.org, I
> followed the sidebar link "Getting Debian: CD ISO images" to
> http://www.debian.org/CD/ .  From there I followed the links to
> "Download CD images with jigdo" and also "Download CD images with
> BitTorrent".  I'll follow these one by one below.
> 
> Jigdo:  http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/
> 
> The page contains all these offers of binary files:
>     * Official jigdo files for the "stable" release on CD:
>       [alpha] [arm] [hppa] [i386] [ia64] [m68k] [mips] [mipsel] [powerpc] [sparc] [s390]
[..] 
> But it contains no links at all to "[source]" to get the Source CDs or
> DVDs.  

Source images are now provided, and obvious links are made available.

Both http://debian.org/CD/http-ftp/ and http://debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/
have now links to source images (CD, DVD, Blueray, jigdo..):
[alpha][amd64][arm][armel][hppa][i386][ia64][mips][mipsel][powerpc][sparc][s390]**[source]**[multi-arch] 



-- 
Simon Paillard

--- End Message ---
Reply to: