Re: GPL question, can open source code can be used to prop. platform?

From: Tim Smith (reply_in_group_at_mouse-potato.com)
Date: 07/28/04 

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 19:40:14 GMT

On 2004-07-25, Lew Pitcher <lpitcher@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> GPL v2 Clause 3 states (in part):
>
> 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under
> Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections
> 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
>
> ...
>
> * b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years,
> to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of
> physically performing source distribution, a complete
> machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
> distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
> customarily used for software interchange; or,
>
> - From the phrase "any third party" in clause 3b, it seems to me that the GPL
> does indeed require that you make the source code available to someone other
> than your direct customers. This seems explicitly to cover the condition where
> your customer redistributes your GPLed code.

You've overlooked "do one of the following". The person distributing the
code gets to decide which "one of the following" they are going to follow.
If you distribute source with the binaries you give to your direct
customers, then you can choose 3a as the "one of the following" that you
will follow. 

-- 
--Tim Smith

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