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John Palmer wrote: > On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, David Johnson wrote: > >> As far as I'm aware when they [linspire] modify a piece of software >> they don't send their changes to the original developer for inclusion >> like other distros do, they just chuck the source somewhere and forget >> about it. See the full quote from David: The main problem I have with Lin/Freespire, in addition to their love for proprietary software, is that they take a lot from the community (i.e. the Free Software available through their Click'n'Run warehouse, which Linspire users have to pay to access) and give *nothing* back. Even when they do release something as Free/open source (because they're required to do so because they've used GPL'd code) they make it unacceptably difficult for people to use the source they make available - e.g. sources which don't compile, apps which have silly dependencies on things in Linspire so you can't use them on other distros, etc. etc. As far as I'm aware when they modify a piece of software they don't send their changes to the original developer for inclusion like other distros do, they just chuck the source somewhere and forget about it. > In doing so are they in breach of the GPL, or any other licence that > applies ? The GPL does NOT require that those who modify GPL code must send their changes to the original developer in a usable form - the GPL DOES specify that if you distribute modified GPL code, you must make the modified source code available in a manner similar to the distribution of the modified software itself. That's all. So David is right - "sticking the source somewhere" [available over the internet in a manner similar to the distribution of the modified software itself] is sufficient but hardly friendly. I'm well known here for my zeal with GPL / GNU / free software but even I think this is OK. ;-) Sometimes these changes are distro-specific and all but meaningless to the original developer - BUT, the GPL requires this step because sometimes important changes slip through that DO need to be identified and fed back into the upstream code. The best person to do this is the upstream developer - grep is everyone's friend. The time when this provision becomes vitally important is when the developer is asked to fix a bug that appears on most distros except a few. Sometimes that can be an architectural reason (32bit->64bit), sometimes it can be because the distro maintainer made some tweaks that reveal a deeper bug. The developer can then go looking in the distro diff.gz or equivalent to hunt down a specific issue. Some distros (step forward Mandrake as-was) have a horrid history of massive patches to upstream code. Sometimes the Mandrake maintainer would contribute elements of those patches back upstream, a lot of the time upstream would have told him where to get off because the changes were so mdk specific! None of this changes the central problem: Freespire is non-free and is using the reputation of free software as a marketing incentive. Such actions stink but we can hardly trademark "free". Just don't recommend it to anyone. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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