But the language defines that if you distribute a binary, you must make the source available, and that source is allowed to be taken, modified, redistributed as binary and source, as long as the person doing the modifications attributes you and all other previous authors.
It doesn’t matter if that binary comes as a firmware on a device the user purchased.
The distributor does not have to distribute the source with the binary, they just have to make it available, for free, and they cannot stop anyone using it as defined above.
Breaking the license does not change how the software is licensed, it just puts the entity doing the violations in violation of a license.
That page doesn’t say that at all. You can paywall the software and the source together for any price (but note that anyone who buys the software can now give out the source freely). Or you can charge for the source freely but only “for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source”.
sounds like it says that to me. “we can’t send you the source over the internet because of security reasons so you need to pay us for a plane ticket so one of our representatives can give you a cd directly” is evil and stupid but completely reasonable in a legal sense.
i’ve had to deal with situations like that before, not specifically because of gpl but because of international regulations. one of my customers was a digital id provider, and they had one of those super-accurate timekeeping/cryptography servers they needed to move from lithuania to sweden. because of laws surrounding encryption of personal information, the server would count as compromised if there was ever a single second where it was left without supervision. so they had two of their people drive non-stop through poland, germany, denmark and half of sweden with the server on a ups in the back seat.
Maybe read the GPL ;)
But the language defines that if you distribute a binary, you must make the source available, and that source is allowed to be taken, modified, redistributed as binary and source, as long as the person doing the modifications attributes you and all other previous authors.
It doesn’t matter if that binary comes as a firmware on a device the user purchased.
The distributor does not have to distribute the source with the binary, they just have to make it available, for free, and they cannot stop anyone using it as defined above.
Breaking the license does not change how the software is licensed, it just puts the entity doing the violations in violation of a license.
the fsf is off the opinion that you explicitly can paywall the sources separately from the product. that’s why i find this interesting.
That page doesn’t say that at all. You can paywall the software and the source together for any price (but note that anyone who buys the software can now give out the source freely). Or you can charge for the source freely but only “for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source”.
sounds like it says that to me. “we can’t send you the source over the internet because of security reasons so you need to pay us for a plane ticket so one of our representatives can give you a cd directly” is evil and stupid but completely reasonable in a legal sense.
I think it would be very difficult to argue that that is reasonable but that would be up to the courts to decide.
i’ve had to deal with situations like that before, not specifically because of gpl but because of international regulations. one of my customers was a digital id provider, and they had one of those super-accurate timekeeping/cryptography servers they needed to move from lithuania to sweden. because of laws surrounding encryption of personal information, the server would count as compromised if there was ever a single second where it was left without supervision. so they had two of their people drive non-stop through poland, germany, denmark and half of sweden with the server on a ups in the back seat.