On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 08:53:40PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes: > > I can pull single files off the FSF's ftp archive and not > > download the COPYING file. Is the FSF in violation as well? We > > seem to be in august company, then. > LOL. Are you speaking of ftp.gnu.org? I don't think you *can* pull > single files off that site; it only contains complete tarballs of > source. Well, it's not an individual file, per se, but you can download: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/emacs-19.10-19.11.diff.gz and get a complete copy of emacs-19.10/lisp/cookie1.el without also getting a complete copy of the GPL. Note that cookie1.el does include ``a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License'' and is thus a Program for the purposes of section 1. > Perhaps you're referring to the CVS servers and things like that, but > that's an odd kind of comparison. Why? Are individual source files not worth having? Are they not equally covered by the GPL? > People are told, in many and > various contexts, that an individual .deb is a good thing to have, > which they can fetch and install on many systems, including non-Debian > ones, including non-Linux ones, in fact. And people can download emacs-19.10-19.11.diff.gz on non GNU systems too. What non-Linux system are you talking about, exactly, anyway? FreeBSD, eg, includes gcc in it's standard install (so presumably all FreeBSD users will have a copy of the GPL somewhere about if they need it), and when you add linux compatability it also includes (amongst other things) fileutils with a copy of its COPYING file. Surely the FSF has better things to do? Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. ``Thanks to all avid pokers out there'' -- linux.conf.au, 17-20 January 2001
Attachment:
pgpjcRzmCUOdW.pgp
Description: PGP signature