tthorn@daimi.aau.dk (Tommy Thorn) writes:
[...]
quoted text
>Your are omitting one very important fact here. You are *required*
>to make sources available on demand for at least three years for
>a distribution fee, *and* state this fact *clearly*.
[...]

I'm in the process of downloading the SLS release... and I recall seeing
the GNU public license in there, *and* I recall that the README mentioned
that full sources were available upon request, on a per-package basis.
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I took it to mean that if you wanted the sources for 'emacs', you'd just
ask them for the sources (sending the appropriate amount of disks and cash,
of course).  My impression was that they didn't expect too many of these
requests and were willing to work it out on a case by case basis.

It also mentioned in the README file that Softlanding(tm?) expected the
*RE*-distributers to "provide support"... and in the case of Linux, under
the GNU license, that means 'provide full source code upon request'.

Softlanding would only be in violation of the GNU license if they were
to *refuse* to give out source-code, or if they were to charge a higher
fee per disk for it.  As it stands, the SLS README file implies quite
strongly that they're willing to copy *anything* of Linux for the same
rate.  If you want the source, they've *told* you that you can have it
and any sensible person would write/call/email to find out more.

[...]
quoted text
>The message is: *STOP THESE BINARY-ONLY RELEASES*!! It's ok to make
>a complete packages, and to distribute binaries and sources seperate, but
>there *must* be a 1-1 corespondence. Who are you to break GPL?

*NO!*  It is only the scant minority who will want full sources.
Observe the success of commercial binary-only UN*X packages like
AT&T UNIX(tm), Xenix(tm), Coherent(tm), etc.  It should be sufficient
to simply mention that the sources are available upon request at a
nominal disk+copying+shipping+handling cost.

Rick Miller   <rick@ee.uwm.edu> | <rick@discus.mil.wi.us>