Re: [Monotone-devel] mingw-instructions

[Stephen Leake]

Hedrik Boom writes:
> On Sun, Jan 09, 2011 at 05:16:23AM -0500, Stephen Leake wrote:
> > Timothy Brownawell <address@hidden> writes:
> > 
> > > On 01/08/2011 06:19 PM, Stephen Leake wrote:
> > >
> > >> Correct. But it would be nice to document how the executables on our
> > >> download page are built. In fact, that's a requirement of the GPL 3
> > >> license
> > >
> > > Some of our downloads like the Windows installer bundle the libraries we
> > > use. So for any copyleft libraries, we really ought to actually host the
> > > source for the version used.
> > 
> > I believe the actual requirements of GPL 2
> > (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt, item 3) are that the source be
> > available, and that we tell people how to get it. So I think the current
> > INSTALL_windows_native.txt is ok in that regard.
> 
> I seem to remember something in the old GPL saying that the instructions 
> for getting the source had to be valid for two years.  

That would be paragraph 3 b:

    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,

So it's three years, and we just have to be able to provide the source.
And yes, I forgot about that part in my previous email.

> And some discussion from the FSF saying that thoe source for the *same
> version* be available. 

That makes sense.

> So if after 18 months someone came looking for the source code for the
> library, he has to be able to get at 18-month-old source code. Not
> that the guy might not prefer current source code, of course, but it's
> the code that produced the binary he got that the licence guarantees.

Right. So in the current case, we can't rely on references to
Sourceforge MinGW in INSTALL, because they change (and the versions we
use may in fact disappear from that site). I might have the source on my
disk, which would be sufficient if I was still part of the monotone
project. Or I might not, if I installed a binary from MinGW.

So the reliable legal solution is to have the correct source version
available on the monotone website.

In practice, I don't think this is a big problem; the right version is
normally available somewhere, and people will normally accept the latest
versions anyway.

The issue of finding version-specific bugs remains, but "upgrade to the
latest" is normally an adequate response there as well.

We don't have enough manpower to do everything right.

-- 
-- Stephe