developers and GPL in products (Was: Re: GPL violations by wireless manufacturers)

Roger Larsson (roger.larsson@skelleftea.mail.telia.com)
Tue, 24 Jun 2003 20:25:27 +0200


This begun as a short reply, but I

On tisdagen den 24 juni 2003 13.20, vanstadentenbrink@ahcfaust.nl wrote:
> They don't have to offer the source as a download under the GPL. They
> just have to enable you to get to the source. As soon as Buffalo puts
> on the their website that they use GPL'ed software (they said they
> would do that within 48 hours) you should be able to request and
> receive the source code of the embedded Linux OS as well as the
> source code of the kernel module.

ONLY if you are a customer, are you? If not, why all this noice?
(They could require you to enter a serial number to get the source...)

A customer of a product B that uses GPL project A can
require the source for A. But what about the primary developer?
Suppose the company charges an obscene amount of money for
the product (that might be an enhanced project A, like a patch to allow
compilation on Win32) - the primary developer might not afford to buy that
product.

One can hope that the customer is smart enough to release the source
to the original developer... But there are no guarantees...

/RogerL

-- 
Roger Larsson
Skellefteċ
Sweden
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