kanotix.com :: Thema anzeigen

kanotix.com

General Support - GPL and Kanotix

doknir - 30.06.2006, 12:29 Uhr
Titel: GPL and Kanotix

Hello!

What the following means for Kanotix?

http://beranger.org/index.php?article=1224

Zitat:

Is FSF asking too much? Is the GPL itself too harsh? Are the creators of small distros unnecessarily bothered by the requirement to provide ALL the code, not only the code they have modified?

Zitat:

In short, I consider FSF's intervention as salutary. And it's the shame people behind popular distros like Knoppix and Damn Small Linux «didn't knew» about GPL's requirements!

Thanks for reply,
Roman

slam - 30.06.2006, 13:32 Uhr
Titel: GPL and Kanotix

We have been approached by the author of the Newsforge story which brought the story initially up. We had nothing to comment on that, because Mepis is famous for it's GPL problems since years (kernel, installer, tools, etc.). That's not our business, as the following discussion ist neither.

Since the very beginnings Kanotix comes with full sources to every single package included, no difference if it comes from our own repositories or the Debian ones. We are strong supporters of the GPL and of Debian. Please note that the apt packaging system makes it very simple to grab the sources for each package.

Personally I guess this story was a fine marketing success for Mepis and it's upcoming next release. Winken

Greetings,
Chris

Gowator - 01.07.2006, 09:58 Uhr
Titel: RE: GPL and Kanotix

The only real reason Mepis is affected is because the GPL stipulates access to the source by the same method.
If you download kanotix then the repo's need to be downloadable, if you sell a mepis CD then the source needs to be on the CD.

If you modify a Debian package you need to make the mods available equally
The easiest distinction is Kanotix is pure debian... its advertised as such and if you want to loose the utils then its just another Debian installer. And for most if not all of the mods kano makes the source and the utility are one and the same.
See the kernel-update ... for a beautiful example of how it should be done.

Download, patch, build and install....

As for other distro's including kanotix not commenting: It may be news to non GPL people but its called professional courtousy. Specifically this is between Mepis and FSF and I think it is admirable that attempts to get other distro's to comment on this returned a blank.