Raul Miller wrote:
But we're doing more than distributing the tarball. The tarballs we're distributing have been modified so that the user need only type acouple commands, and (using software we've provided) the binaries are reconstituted on their machine.
So what? First off, the GPL gives us permission --- under section 2 --- to make and distribute that tarball. The user has permission to run those several commands under GPL 0.
The only thing that the user doesn't have permission to do is distribute the resulting binary.
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.
While that may be the end result, we have not distributed that binary, which is the only relevant thing the GPL doesn't let us do.