[arch-dev-public] Tool tarball location

[Jason Chu]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2007 at 08:15:59PM -0500, Dan McGee wrote:
> On 10/7/07, Jason Chu <jason at archlinux.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 07, 2007 at 05:18:31PM -0700, eliott wrote:
> > > Wait..what is this thread about?
> > > I may have lost some history due to early message deletion....
> > >
> > > Are we talking about storing the source to every package in our ftp tree?
> >
> > Yeah.  The GPL says that if you distribute a derivative work (binary
> > package) you also have to make available the source.
> >
> > We will need a marker in the PKGBUILD to say that we can't distribute the
> > source, but I'm not worried about that just yet.
> 
> Before we dive too deep into this...we only have to _make available_.
> That doesn't mean we have to actually serve this up on FTP or mirror
> it or anything. Just having it on the server for compliance would be
> fine, as anyone that requested source could ask a developer and we
> could respond.

From the GPL:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

    a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
    source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
    1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

    b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
    years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
    cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
    machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
    distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
    customarily used for software interchange; or,

    c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
    to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
    allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
    received the program in object code or executable form with such
    an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

So we either have to accompany our packages with complete corresponding
machine-readable source code or a written offer that's valid for three
years to distribute it.

At this point, we're not doing any of these, so doing anything is better
than doing nothing.  I just want to make sure that there is no confusion
about the requirements of the GPL.

Jason
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