"The cipherfunk web site, which made extra packages available to Ubuntu and MEPIS users, was shut down in response to complaints from Ubuntu team members Matthew Garrett and Philipp Kern. It is my understanding they alleged that cipherfunk was not making modified GPLed source code available in a timely fashion. You can read about it the website." "Well, the GNU GPL states as part of Section 3 of the licence that I must provide source code on request for no more than the cost of physically performing the distribution. Given that the host this box is on actually costs me 110.95AUD every 30 days to run, 9.90AUD, as nice as that is - still will cost me over 100AUD to distribute the code at all." Update: As Matthew Garret pointed out in the comments, he wrote his side of the story on his blog.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Because that's not the kind of world we live in. The people defending the GPL have a hard enough time defending the letter of the license from commercial companies. The job would become impossible if they introduced ambiguity by making special provisions for certain people in the "spirit" of the license.
Not true; laws have the 'spirit of which they were written' - just because the marriage act of 1840 (or what have you) doesn't unequivocally state that its between a man and a women doesn' MEAN that the original law makers were some what enlightened to the idea of same sex marriage, it was simply assumed that such a debate would never occur in the future.
If you want the legislation changed, you must go through the usual channels, lobbby for changes to be put forward to parliament, pray that maybe your ammendment will be chosen from the box, then go through the usual processors; simply re-reading something and come up with wild and weird ways of looking into something, simply to fullfil some innner desire is disingenuous to the original purpose of the law or the said document.
Edited 2006-08-25 19:35
Member since:
2005-07-06
And why people give so much importance to the words of a license and so little to it's spirit?
Because that's not the kind of world we live in. The people defending the GPL have a hard enough time defending the letter of the license from commercial companies. The job would become impossible if they introduced ambiguity by making special provisions for certain people in the "spirit" of the license.