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Bug#129629: Not really distributing sources



Richard,

And the Debian project makes sources available via apt.  What they
haven't done in the past (and it looks like you might win on this one
anyway, as much as I think it's a bad idea) is force people in
pay-per-bit dialup connections to download Sources.gz for every
distribution section every time they run "apt-get update"... People can
figure this out on their own.  If it were set up like that by default,
I'd be betting Jason would get TONNES of bug reports from European users
to the effect of "stop wasting my bandwidth with your crazy default
configuration!"...

Next thing you know, I'm sure you're going to want him to waste even
more bandwidth and users' drive space by forcing the user to download
the source packages themselves every time they install a binary package.
This is insanity.

To me, the GPL is about two things.  It's about protecting the rights of
the software author(s) (copyright, etc), while giving maximum
flexibility to the users (access to source, and so on).  This doesn't
mean we have to shove it down people's throats.

Marxist Communism is a great idea... Militant "communist"
revolutionaries are not.  One needs to distinguish between the ideals
(happy users and happy programmers) and the perceived ideals (trying to
prove a point to look insane?).

I'm sorry you think I have "no respect for the GPL's author"... I
respect a lot of the things you have said in the past.  I respect a lot
of the work you have done.  But, this doesn't stop me from stepping back
and thinking "you know, RMS can really be a bit of a fanatic at times.."

Was the GNU project not originally about flexibility of both programmers
and end users?... The ability to "have it how you want it"?... The idea
that with the source open and available we can all be happier with our
products?  Well, setting up defaults on a system to satisfy your idea of
how the source should be distributed may well piss off a lot of users
and mirror admins.  Is that what it's really about?

...Adam Conrad

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Stallman [mailto:rms@gnu.org] 
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 12:04 PM
To: adconrad@0c3.net
Cc: 129629@bugs.debian.org
Subject: Re: Bug#129629: Not really distributing sources


    As I'm sure you're aware (as you had, no doubt, a large hand in
writing
    it), the GPL doesn't specify that Debian (or anyone else) has to
    'distribute' the source, merely that they make the source available,
    which it very much is.

Your understanding of the GPL matches your respect for its author.  It
requires offering "equivalent access" to the source code.  If the
usual access to the binaries is with apt, the sources must be
accessible that way too.




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