Re: New summary: Binary peripheral software
--- John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org> wrote:
> Humberto Massa writes:
> > b. consider it a misrepresentation of license and render the whole
> > undistributable and unlawful.
>
> b. is not established. If the blob was put there by the sole author of the
> work and the work then distributed under the GPL by him he would probably
> not be able to block redistribution.
>
> It would, of course, not be DFSG-compliant.
Hmm, I am beginning to worry about this view. Isn't it a wee bit
paradoxical? The GPL and the DFSGs both demand "source". One says
on the one hand that the binary _is_ the source so that he can say
that the requirements of the GPL are satisfied, then he turns around
and says that the code can't go into main because it doesn't come
with source. Couldn't the evil publisher of program foo use the
fact that Debian distributes foo in non-free as evidence that
Debian is distributing foo in knowing violation of section 3 of
the GPL?
If so then moving GPL'ed binaries to non-free is the wrong thing
to do. They should either be left in main or removed from the
archive entirely.
Still, I agree with you that the scenario just described seems
far-fetched.
--
Thomas
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