Re: Debian violates GPL?
bcwhite@pobox.com writes:
> > While in the process of getting Debian to work on the UltraSparc and
> > update all of the out of date packages, I came across a rather
> > alarming problem: there a quite a few binary packages in binary-sparc
> > (and binary-*) that don't have source. One example is
> > "glibc-pre2.1-2.0.100.orig.tar.gz", which disappeared from potato when
> > "glibc-pre2.1-2.0.105.orig.tar.gz" was uploaded (slink has an older
> > version).
> > The sparc distribution has 300 packages that are older versions than
> > the ones in slink which means that the source and/or diff files are
> > missing. This would violate the GPL.
> Actually, the GPL states that the source code has to be available. It
> doesn't actually say it has to be on an FTP site or on CD, so long as
> we could point to the original source elsewhere or send it to whoever
> were to ask.
Where is the original source and diff file for:
glibc-pre2.1_2.0.100-2.1
Version 2.0.100 is no longer on the FSF site, and the Debian diff file
is probably long gone. This specific case doesn't matter to me, but
in general, we probably have 200 or so cases of infringement of the
GPL of varying degrees. Some are just missing diff files and others
are missing sources. In the sparc case, I will be recompiling stuff,
but there is a general problem here (it's not always true that the
newer version will even compile).
IMHO, the best solution is to keep any diff file and .orig.tar.gz that
is needed to create a binary package on the ftp site. (This can be
kept track of by updating a database as packages are added to and
deleted from the archive.)
We will need to fix this eventually.
> > What is the proceedure on doing uploads of major components like this?
> > Is there a leader for the sparc distribution? Is this a bad time? (I
> > need these components in before I upload recompiled versions of those
> > 300 packages.)
> Release is still about a month away, so go ahead and upload a new version
> if you wish.
I checked with Joel Klecker and uploaded the fixed glibc to master.
I've also uploaded sparc binary packages for the current egcs source
package. Binaries for other out-of-date packages will follow.
Steve
dunham@cse.msu.edu
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