Re: distributing source

Russell Nelson <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 
> > djb doesn't care whether your users are "registered" or not; he only cares
> > about how you're distributing source.  He gives you permission to
> > distribute a specific unmodified compressed tar file /and nothing else/.
> > So a cvs tree of a modified qmail is definitely not allowed.
 
> He's not distributing it to the public.

Isn't he, though?

> He's only distributing it internally to the members of his organization.
> Surely you don't mean to say that a corporation cannot put qmail into a CVS
> server, only accessible to employees of the corporation.  Or that a
> corporation cannot distribute tarballs of qmail pre-patched with selected
> patches.  So why discriminate against an unincorporated organization?

An incorporated entity has specific qualifying criteria and a fairly narrow
definition; given a "company", it's easy to tell whether a given act of
providing the software was an "internal" act of giving it to a fellow employee
or a "distribution" to someone outside the company.

If the organization isn't incorporated, where's the boundary?  As a free
software author, it would make me very nervous to think someone could take one
of my packages, make changes to it, and distribute a license-violating copy to
someone just by declaring "oh, he's in my club, so it doesn't count as
distribution".

So yes, I'm saying I don't think it would be right.  Whether djb agrees with
me I don't know and won't try to guess.

Charles
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Charles Cazabon                        <[email protected]>
GPL'ed software available at:     http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/
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