Re: standalone application distribution

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 4 Jan 2014, at 05:39, a b <a_bright2@hotmail.com> wrote:

> After having successfully gotten a GNUstep application to run on Win7 where 
> no GNUstep is installed (reference #1), I am now attempting to perform a 
> cleanup 
> which will result in something which could be distributed to a Windows user 
> who 
> has not installed GNUstep. 
>  
> According to the "Introduction to GNUstep"   (reference #2)  at 
> www.gnustep.org,
> the GNUstep libraries are covered under the GNU Lesser (Library) Public 
> License 
> while the stand-alone tools in GNUstep are under the standard GPL.  
> SystemPreferences confirms this in the info panel as follows:
>                    SystemPreferences
>                    GNUstep System Preferences
>                    Release: 1.2.0
>                    Authors: Riccardo Mottola
>                                 Enrico Sersale <enrico@fibernet.ro>
>                    http://www.gnustep.org/experience/systempreferences.htm
>                    Copyright (C) 2005-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>                    Released under the GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
>                    Current theme: WinUXTheme
>  
> SystemPreferences appears to be composed of the following executable
> and associated files:
>                     Directory    SystemPreferences
>                                     Size   Name
>                                     6,613 GNUstep.conf       (*** added since 
> GNUstep is not installed ***)
>                         <DIR>          Resources
>                                   247,017 SystemPreferences.exe
>                      Directory    SystemPreferences\Resources
>                                      Size   Name
>                         <DIR>          English.lproj
>                                      723 Info-gnustep.plist
>                                      306 SystemPreferences.desktop
>                                   9,662 SystemPreferences.ico
>                                   9,530 SystemPreferences.tiff
>  
>                      Directory    SystemPreferences\Resources\English.lproj
>                         <DIR>          SystemPreferences.gorm
>                      Directory    
> SystemPreferences\Resources\English.lproj\SystemPreferences.gorm
>                                    Size   Name
>                                    426 data.classes
>                                    184 data.info
>                                 2,511 objects.gorm
>  
> Based upon the answers I received to my earlier questions
> I believe that it is permitted to distribute just these files in a 
> standalone package with the necessary GNUstep .dlls and configuration
> files.  Based upon previous discussion, I believe that this would fall under
> binary distribution so no distribution of the source code would be necessary.
> Also no modification was made to any of the GNUstep or SystemPreferences
> files which I feel would also negate the need for distribution of the source.
>  
> Would anyone care to comment on this, and if any of this would require source 
> code 
> distribution please point out the relevant parts?
>  
> Thanks

Obviously if you haven't modified the source, there's no modified source for 
you to supply.
When you are supplying some binary built from unmodified source within your 
package, you need to make the source available ... but that could just mean you 
tell people to look at the GNUstep website, so I think you are right to say you 
don't need to provide the source.

However, the source code doesn't take a huge amount of space ... so unless 
there's a particular space issue that makes it impractical,  I would consider 
it a courtesy to the end user to supply the source code as part of the package, 
even though you aren't obliged to do so.