RE: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

From: David Schwartz
Date: Tue Jun 26 2007 - 15:10:45 EST



Alexandre Oliva:

> On Jun 26, 2007, Al Boldi <a1426z@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > I read your scenario of the vendor not giving you the source to
> > mean: not
> > directly; i.e. they could give you a third-party download link.
>
> This has never been enough to comply with GPLv2.

A lot of people seem to say this, but I don't think it's true. Section 3b
says:

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,

A web page with a download URL is just such an offer. The Internet is a
medium customarily used for software interchange. I do not see why the
following statement doesn't meet the requirements above:

"The source code for this product is available under the terms of the GPL
from the following web page http://www.mycompanyname.com/gpl";

This assumes that no special steps are needed to obtain the software from
that web page.

DS


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