Re: Distribution of sources and binaries and the GPL, Again :( (was [Mingw-users] MinGW GCC)

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi> writes:

> Tor Lillqvist wrote:
>  > > Do you realize that there is no separate GLib source package
>  > > for Windows. Are you really claiming that LGPL requires source for all
>  > > dependent libraries that might not be present on some operating system
>  > > to be included in the source packages?
> 
> Earnie Boyd writes:
>  > Yes, really.
> 
>  > If you claim to be able to build using MSVC but you require a special
>  > tool, then yes you need to supply that special tool to distribute the
>  > source.
> 
> As I said, there is no separately distributed GLib source package that
> would be indicated as being especially for Windows. If you are
> correct, this the applies to the official glib-2.x.x.tar.gz tarballs
> on ftp.gtk.org and all its mirrors.
> 
> What do the main GLib developers think? Does it seem reasonable to you
> to have to include libintl, libiconv and heaven knows what else in the
> GLib source tarballs? Please note that he is specifically talking
> about GLib source packages. Taken to its logical conclusion, I would
> say that Earnie's claims mean that for any operating system version
> where somebody claims to have been able to build GLib, all tools not
> included by the vendor on that platform would need to be included in
> the source tarballs.

Frankly, the concerns being raised here are completely spurious.  

- There are very few restrictions in the LGPL on source code
  distributions. See section 1.  

- For binary files, the argument here seems to be based on on section
  6 of the LGPL, which is irrelevant here, because everything that Tor
  is providing for download is GPL/LGPL.

About the only argument that might have any legal validity is that Tor
should be providing source tarballs of libintl and libiconv since he
is providing binary distributons of them.

But by current convention, a link to the original source is basically
as good as providing the tarballs themselves, and is certainly more
friendly in terms of avoiding confusion.

And the link to the "gettext for Win32" project page is quite
obvious.

Regards,
                                        Owen