Re: UnitedLinux violating GPL?

David Woodhouse (dwmw2@infradead.org)
Sat, 11 Jan 2003 19:27:59 +0000


brand@jupiter.cs.uni-dortmund.de said:
> Great! The "complete source code" for the kernel does include each
> and every single patch applied since linux-0.0.1? Guess I'll have to
> complain to a certain Torvalds then...

> Don't be silly. "Complete source code" means the source needed to
> rebuild the binary, nothing more. If that is a mangled version derived
> from some other source, so be it. You are explicitly allowed to
> distribute changed versions, but only under GPL. [IANAL etc, so...]

I disagree. A preprocessed source file with all the variables renamed to
random strings would suffice to rebuild the binary, and is obviously not
acceptable -- being able to rebuild the binary is not the only criterion.

"The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work
for making modifications to it."

Note that the GPL doesn't say you have to give it in the preferred form for
_building_ it, but the preferred form for _modifying_ it.

In the opinion of many devlopers, the preferred form of the Linux kernel for
maintaining it is a set of individual patches against the closest
'official' release, and not a tarball containing already-modified code.

--
dwmw2

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