At 04:17 pm -0500 on November 29, 2000, Brian Mays wrote:
> The GPL says that we can distribute the binaries ...
>
> : ... provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each
> : copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep
> : intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence
> : of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy
^^^^
> : of this License along with the Program.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> If here "you" refers to Debian, then we are not violating the GPL. We
> distribute all of the packages, including "base", which contains the a
> copy of the GPL. We distribute the program AND we give our recipients
> a copy of the license.
Making the GPL available in a separate file that may or may not be
received by the recipient of the GPLed Program does not constitute
"giving" the GPL to the recipients of such a program "along with the
Program". Is Debian giving the License along with the Program to
someone who runs wget http://http.us.debian.org/path/to/GPLed/deb on a
RedHat system? I don't think so.