RE: Dell vs. GPL

Anders Karlsson (anders@trudheim.com)
30 Jun 2003 08:39:33 +0100


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On Mon, 2003-06-30 at 07:57, ahorn@deorth.org wrote:
[snip]
> I'm still not seeing any evidence of anyone being blocked from obtaining
> the source code (although I haven't followed the whole thread)

=46rom what I gathered, people were irritated because Dell only supplied a
patch of what modifications they had made, against a known RedHat
kernel.

IANAL, but I think they have matched what the GPL required them to by
doing so. There is a relatively easy way to recreate exactly what they
did. A correctly worded request to the right place inside Dell should
perhaps even yield the SPM they used.

> I repeat, did anyone ask dell for source code for this supposed violation=
?
> They are not bound to _distribute_ the source code with their software
> only to make it available in a reasonable fashion upon request.

It was not clear, but it appeared that the source was not asked for.
There was a whole lot of complaining that it wasn't distributed without
being asked for though.

> Or am I missing something here ?
>=20
> (not being argumentative here by the way, this is really interesting
> discussion)

It is interesting, but it would be nice to have a professional legal
opinion on the matter.

/A

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