Possible GPL Violation of Linux in Amstrad's E3 Videophone (me too???)

Possible GPL Violation of Linux in Amstrad's E3 Videophone (me too???)

[Gustavo Guillermo Perez]

Oops then may be I'm violating GPL too, cause I'm using Linux 2.4.xx, uClibc 
and CUPS and, and, in my small distro, and I'm not putting to download the 
sources of the whole scripts to made the bootable ISO, and control the 
system.
I'm distributing a uClibc Linux Based distro, just live, to shell personalized 
copies to my customers (disconfiguration-proof), I put a ligth version to 
download and sources of everything I can on two DSL servers. But cause I'm 
alone in developing I've a little disorder to understand some stuffs about 
GPL and I've a couple of peoples that knows my work and they wants to shell
it without say tanks, I decide to not upload the whole sources of remote panel 
and scripts and full version until I shell 50 or 100 copies.

But in other side, cause I get the whole Linux Development Box as almost GPL, 
I made some contributions in GPL too (to feel I'm part of the GPL team), like 
add2cd script to make console multisession disks (perl) may be helps someone 
to make sources backup:
http://www.compunauta.com/forums/linux/grabarcds/img/add2cd
and subfixer to blah blah (Java, I can't understand Sun's license if I compile 
it without kaffe or GNU classpath). and and and...

I take GPL as a flag, I take it since Richard M. Stallman do a conference 
about free Software on Rosario/Argentina, every Program I made for my 
customers, I tell they this is a free software, you pay for get them running 
not for rights and life warranties, and you have the whole sources if you 
don't want my services anymore. They call us as a last option cause we can do 
whatever they can imagine with Linux. On this cases, is a personalized 
software, we do not publish everything until we have a customer, and only 
publish the sources to our customers (they pay for the software get born). 
When my small company shell computers we install and promote Linux on them as 
a primary boot option over Micro$ofs popular Os, and enforce Free OpenSource 
Software usage over Comercial one. People loves the Linux robustness when 
they know them. Thanks to the Linux Kernel Team I can install almost 
everything on a Linux box. But we don't provide to our customers the whole 
sources of every program, just kernel's one cause is needed to build third 
party drivers and normal users use disk space for multimedia and they never 
need to see or modify the sources...

Then I think I'm not evil, I'm wondering to ear that one DVD Player supports 
DIVX thanks to Linux/MPlayer or a Phone or a Government is using Linux on 
their offices, or... but I hate to profit without say just Tanks Guys.

¿I'm wrong, to hide for a while some sources????????

Thanks Kernel Suff!

--
-------
Gustavo Guillermo Perez
Compunauta uLinux
www.userver.tk

Re: Possible GPL Violation of Linux in Amstrad's E3 Videophone (me too???)

[Alan Cox]

On Sul, 2004-10-03 at 14:48, Gustavo Guillermo Perez wrote:
> Then I think I'm not evil, I'm wondering to ear that one DVD Player supports 
> DIVX thanks to Linux/MPlayer or a Phone or a Government is using Linux on 
> their offices, or... but I hate to profit without say just Tanks Guys.

You need to make the GPL components available to customers, and anything
derived from it. Thats all. That means if you've written additional
programs that make your system work (even shell scripts!) then you could
in theory choose to keep those proprietary until you see 100 copies.
Lots of people ship both free software and proprietary software to make
a product. Richard Stallman always asks people to keep the two clearly
seperated so that someone can easily figure out which bit is which

Also your duties end with giving your customers the GPL source, they
don't extend to helping with it, supporting it or third parties.

Alan

Re: Possible GPL Violation of Linux in Amstrad's E3 Videophone (me too???)

[Matthew Garrett]

Gustavo Guillermo Perez <gustavo@compunauta.com> wrote:

> ¿I'm wrong, to hide for a while some sources????????

The GPL requires that source be available to anyone who receives a copy
of the binaries. There are three ways to do this, only two of which
apply to commercial distribution. You can either:

a) Provide the source alongside the binaries, or
b) Provide a written offer (a text file on a CD is fine) for the source

You never need to provide the source to anyone you don't provide the
binaries to - however, anyone who you do give the source to is free to
give it to other people, if they want to. So yes, you can "hide" the
source, but people you give binaries to must be able to get it. 

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.linux-rutgers.kernel@srcf.ucam.org

Re: Possible GPL Violation of Linux in Amstrad's E3 Videophone (me too???)

[Francois Romieu]

Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk> :
[...]
> The GPL requires that source be available to anyone who receives a copy
> of the binaries. There are three ways to do this, only two of which
> apply to commercial distribution. You can either:
> 
> a) Provide the source alongside the binaries, or
> b) Provide a written offer (a text file on a CD is fine) for the source
> 
> You never need to provide the source to anyone you don't provide the
> binaries to - however, anyone who you do give the source to is free to

Section 3.b of the in-kernel COPYING file states "any third party".

--
Ueimor

Re: Possible GPL Violation of Linux in Amstrad's E3 Videophone (me too???)

[Anton Ertl]

Matthew Garrett writes:
>The GPL requires that source be available to anyone who receives a copy
>of the binaries. There are three ways to do this, only two of which
>apply to commercial distribution. You can either:
>
>a) Provide the source alongside the binaries, or
>b) Provide a written offer (a text file on a CD is fine) for the source
>
>You never need to provide the source to anyone you don't provide the
>binaries to

If you go for option b, you have to provide the offer for the source
to _any third party_, so (in combination with option c) anyone could
take the offer and ask you for the source.

If you want to avoid having to keep track of the source code belonging
to a binary version, and keeping it around for three years, better
choose option a.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl                    Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html