Re: BioImageSuite distribution problems
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007, David Paleino wrote:
I'm a Debian maintainer, and am a member of the Debian-Med project. Our project
focuses on bringing medical software to Debian users.
Hi, from another Debian developer. :)
First of all, it's useless asking for a password to download GPLed software. I
believe it might be a "violation" (it may be a harsh term probably) of the GPL
itself (the distribution is not totally "free", but you must register first).
To be correct GPL does not require to put your source code online. It just
says that you have to provide the source code on request (which is exactly
what you are doint). So even if I support David's point there he is believing
wrong and there is legally no violation of the GPL on your side.
Secondly, distributing this software in Debian will "undermine" your policy. In
fact, Debian carries all the source files in its repositories, thus making your
registration-is-needed-policy kinda useless.
Well, perhaps David was a little bit short here in explaining the issue. There
are some guidlines for Debian developers and one says you should be polite to
your upstream developers and kindly ask them whether they really do like it
that their software is packaged and distribited by Debian GNU/Linux. In fact
most projects to and even if the software is free (else Debian could not
distribute it anyway) and we are legally allowed to distribute it we would
like to foster a polite climate between Debian and the people who write the
code of a project (we call it upstream developers). In your special case
we would like to make sure that you understand that the consequence of a
distribition by Debian would be that your password protection of the source
code will be undermined because everybody can download it from the Debian
mirror. What do you think about this?
Kind regards and thanks for providing bioimagesuite
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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