On Sat, Feb 11, 2006 at 04:12:39PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote: > Would it be an excessive requirement to provide an offer for source (at > up to 10 times your cost of providing source)? The offer could easily > be stuck in the fine print next to the copyright notices.
I've generally been of the opinion that the "provide an offer for N years" option in the GPLv2 is not a free option. That is, software that requires it and didn't offer the GPL's easier alternatives (to place the source alongside the binary on the FTP) would be non-free. I don't think we've ever actually seen a license do that and it's only come up theoretically. (Who would ever mirror Debian if every mirror had to maintain a snapshots.d.o? An argument could easily be made on Dissident Test grounds, as well. The "10 times" change makes some cases more reasonable for some people, but not free.) So I think my answer is yes; it's not reasonable to require that I commit myself, for years into the future, to the task of archiving, packaging and shipping source, and this is just a slight variation on that theme. This, by the way, isn't a flaw in the GPLv2: it's perfectly fine for a free license to offer non-free alternatives alongside the free ones. (You know that, of course.) -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
