Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.

[Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org>]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 12:54:29AM -0500, David Nusinow wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 02:07:54PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> > David Nusinow <david_nusinow@verizon.net> writes:
> > No, you don't have to find one.  Just write a very, very simple one.
> > I don't think it can be done in a free way, but if you show me one,
> > then I'll believe you.
> 
> I've thought about this for a while, and I think that perhaps the simplest way
> that it would work would be to distribute changes to your immediate upstream,
> rather than the original upstream. You would have to have some relationship
> with your immediate upstream in order to get the software to modify in the
> first place, so there should be no additional fee associated with distribution
> upstream in this case. 

So if I bought a Debian CD off the shelf, I'd have to offer my changes to
that store?  I wouldn't want to have to spend time on hold to try to
explain that to a CompUSA clerk.  :)  I may not even live near the store
(purchased while on a trip), the person that burnt my CD may have moved,
it might be ten years later and I don't even remember where I got it or
how to contact the person, or any other factors may change.

What about automated nightly snapshots of my CVS tree of modifications (or
even anonymous CVS access, for that matter)?  I'm distributing new changes
every day.  (I think this is another problem with "send changes on demand",
too.  If I use CVS, upstream might request any revision that was ever
downloaded; the freedom to purge old revisions to free up disk space--more
generally, to not have to archive source--is important to me, at least.)

I'm not sure that "the person you got your source from" really qualifies
as "upstream", anyway; I suspect most people who really want upstream
distribution wouldn't be satisfied with it, since the point is usually
to allow integrating the code.

-- 
Glenn Maynard