[aur-general] Notification of GPL violation

[Miguel Revilla Rodríguez]

El sáb, 22 may 2021 a las 21:57, Manhong Dai (<daimh at umich.edu>) escribió:

>
> I repectfully disagree. In this case the package maintainer had a patch
> file which includes some source code.
>
> Thus, Arch AUR is distributing modified source code.
>

Yep, it is distributing source code published under the GPL-3 license in a
way that it cannot be confused at all with the original code, not in form,
not in name, and certainly not in usability (that patch, by itself, is
pretty much useless if it is not applied to something) so, respectfully too
(cannot be in a different way), the patch file fully complies with the
GPL-3, as the patching only happens in a "not public" environment, which is
very different of, for example, distributing the patched sources without
notice that it is not what upstream is originally publishing. Anyway, the
original complaint was about "modifying" (i.e., patching) the software
while keeping the original name, and not about distributing a few lines of
the original code in the form of a patch. The former is simply not
happening (at least not in the AUR/Arch "domains"), the latter wasn't even
mentioned by the OP/upstream and wouldn't be a violation of the license
either.

Best