[WBEL-users] Redhat Legalese

[Hedemark, Magnus]

Joe Klemmer [mailto:klemmerj@webtrek.com] said:

> 	According to the GPL they do.  They must make available 
> all the source
> for anything licensed under the GPL.  They do not, however, 
> have to make
> it available for free.  They have every right to charge 
> serious $$$$ for
> the srpms.  Thankfully they are making them available for free.

I agree that they can charge.

I disagree about the "serious $$$$" bit.

Please refer to Section 3 of the GPL.  Red Hat can choose one or more of
options a, b & c but must choose at least one of those options.  In a
nutshell, they can basically:

a) Distributes source with the binaries in a customary machine-readable
form.
AND/OR
b) Give any third party a machine readable copy of the source for a fee that
is "no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution"
(i.e. how much does it cost to pay someone to burn a CD for you).
AND/OR
c) Not worth mentioning here since it only applies to non-commercial
redistribution.

I think that Section 3 is pretty clear that the source tarball is not
enough; the spec file must also be included. ("The source code for a work
means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an
executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all
modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus
the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the
executable.")

Red Hat is going above and beyond their GPL requirements, IMHO.  They could
charge bandwidth fees for ftp access.  Or charge a reasonable fee to spin
CD's.  Kudos for pushing SRPM's to the mirrors.