On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Daniel Golle wrote:
Hi Alberto,
On Fri, Feb 03, 2017 at 10:59:38AM +0000, Alberto Bursi wrote:
On 02/03/2017 07:35 AM, Stanislav V. Korsakov wrote:
Hi Daniel,
We provide our GPLed and dual licensed source codes to our customer only.
Not our source code is available at http://gw.stasoft.net/dl/
What you wrote here sounds like a license violation.
Source code of GPLed software you use *must* be provided to everyone
that asks it, not just to customers.
That's what the GPL license requires.
Strictly speaking, it must be provided to anyone who also got access
to the binary. So, if you offer a free download of the binary, you must
provide the sources under the same terms. Ie. by downloading the
binaries from the website, that makes me a customer entitled to ask for
the sources.
However, if you provide the binaries only to customers or keep them
"in-house" (that's what most telcos do), only the parties which were
handed the binaries can ask for the sources, that's at least how I
understood the GPLv2.
If you never distribute the binaries, then you don't have to provide source to
anyone (but if you sell devices with the binaries, you are distributing them)
If you "enclose a written offer for the source" when you ship the binaries, that
offer is good to anyone, not just those who receive the binaries (and must be in
place for at least three years). Most companies do this and put tarballs of the
source on a server and forget about it.
If you ship the source with the binaries on the same media, then you are not
required to setup any additional methods/processes for people to ask for the
source. Your obligations under the GPL are satisfied by shipping the source with
the binaries, so this is the easiest thing to do in the long run.
There have been a number of companies who have tried to set things up so that
they only give the source to their customers, and only when they ask, with
restrictions preventing the customers from giving the source to anyone else.
These have always been a violation of the GPL and while none have gone to court
in the US, that's because the violators have always settled before getting into
court (with vmware being the only exception, and I haven't heard that that case
has gone to trial yet)
David Lang
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