Re: RES: What makes software copyrightable anyway?
On 5/18/05, Anthony DeRobertis <anthony@derobert.net> wrote:
> Raul Miller wrote:
> > If "distribute" meant "distribute in the form of debian packages as
> > defined by the semantics of dpkg" as opposed to "distribute whatever
> > the mechanism", we'd be golden.
>
> As long as we don't distribute GPL'd code linked with OpenSSL in "object
> code or executable form", but only as source code, we don't have a GPL
> problem AFAICT (source code, of course, being defined as always by the
> GPL as "...the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.")
>
> As I'm sure you're aware, debian's source code format is a tarball and a
> diff. I don't think there is any question that is an allowed way to
> distribute source under the GPL (and if it is not, we've got much bigger
> problems).
But we're doing more than distributing the tarball. The tarballs we're
distributing have been modified so that the user need only type a
couple commands, and (using software we've provided) the
binaries are reconstituted on their machine.
Logically, the process used here is more complex than that used by
gunzip, but effect is similar.
The end result is that we have taken steps to make the binaries appear
on the user's machine, so we have some responsibility for that result.
Of course... if it turns out that the GPL doesn't really matter for some other
reason, this would be no big deal. M.K.Edwards appears to be arguing
that this is the case, but I'm still not convinced.
--
Raul
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