The FSF's being stupid again, it seems...

[Paul Fox]

 > So apparently the FSF's mounted a campaign to get people to switch to BSD:
 > http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/06/23/1728205&tid=150

i'm confused.  i don't see "switch to bsd" in there anywhere.

 > 
 > And I just thought I'd ping the list about changing our
 > licensing page to say that if you have a statement about what
 > exact version of busybox you used, with what .config file, and
 > that you didn't modify it, then you don't need to provide the
 > source code.

why?  you're letting my company off the hook for providing source
for the code we put into our products?  i don't understand the
rationale.  why should my customers have to go to busybox.net
for sources?  why should busybox.net have to provide them?  (as
maintainer, you're under no obligation to keep old releases
around.)

 > 
 > Also, if GPLv3 actually _requires_ this (rather than just
 > having a statement good for 3 years to provide the source code
 > on request, as the GPLv2 has), that would be (to me) another
 > reason to go for V2 only.

i think you're reading something into that story that i'm not.

it's no surprise to me at all that if someone sells me a product
containing the Mepis distribution on a CD, then they're on the
hook to be able to provide me with the source for all of the code
that's on that CD.  whether or not they've modified the sources,
or even taken binaries directly, from some upstream provider. 
why would anyone ever have thought otherwise?

 > 
 > Does anybody else have any opinions on this issue?
 > 
 > Rob

paul

=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at brightstareng.com