Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 25th Nov 2007 23:05 UTC, submitted by jello
Members of the Linux community have complained that the hot new sub-notebook from Asus, the eeePC, may have violated the spirit of the Linux General Public License. Some Linux advocates claim the eeePC has not included required source code with the installed Xandros Linux distribution and does not easily enable users to install another distro. However, there are indications that eeePC fans probably don't care.
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Member since:
2005-07-08
Because, under section 3c of the GPLv2, that option would only be permitted if 1) Asus received the binary packages from Xandros along with a written promise to provide source code upon request for three years (3b) as opposed to Xandros providing public access to the source on their website (3a), and if 2) Asus were distributing these packages as a part of a non-commercial product.
Since they fail both of these criteria, Asus must comply under their choice of 3a or 3b. Since their tarball only partially complies under 3a, they must either provide the rest of the code on their website or distribute to all current and future eeePC owners a written promise to provide the rest of the source code upon request as per 3b.
The rationale is that Xandros is making it very easy for Asus to acquire the source code, and Asus is using the software for profit, so there's no compelling reason why offering the source code as Xandros does for them would be an undue burden on Asus. Furthermore, since Xandros hasn't promised to provide the source code for three years, they could very well go out of business tomorrow and take down their ftp server. So Asus has to provide source code so long as they are in the business of distributing the software.
More generally, the idea of a distributed software ecosystem is strained by the implicit pressure on upstream distributors from their downstream redistributors. This is a delicate relationship, and it makes practical sense to require that the downstream takes responsibility for its own operations. An upstream distributor should only benefit from gaining downstream projects. They should not dread their consumption of project resources, including bandwidth demands on ftp servers.