🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <slrn6qhoe5.6h7.kturvey@www.sprocketshop.com>,
Kenneth P. Turvey <kturvey@www.sprocketshop.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 8 Jul 1998 04:40:19 GMT, Egil Kvaleberg <egil@kvaleberg.no> wrote:
>>On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, Kenneth P. Turvey wrote:
>>
>>> There is nothing in the GPL that indicates the fare should be only for
>>> handling.
>>
>>Did you ever read the GPL? It says:
>>
>>     You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy
>
>1) The GPL does not apply at all to the owner of the copyright.  They may
>charge whatever they wish for the program without regard to what the GPL
>says.  The intent of the GPL is to protect the rights of future users of the
>source code (including the purchasers) not restrict the rights of the owner of
>the copyright.  In addition the GPL does not put an upper limit on this 
>charge.  

Actually, it seems to me that g21k is derived from gcc version 2.3.3,
and as such section 2 of the GPL would apply, specifically:

	2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any
	portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and
	copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms
	of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these
	conditions:

		a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent
		notices stating that you changed the files and the date
		of any change.

		b) You must cause any work that you distribute or
		publish, that in whole or in part contains or is
		derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be
		licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties
		under the terms of this License.

		c) If the modified program normally reads commands
		interactively when run, you must cause it, when started
		running for such interactive use in the most ordinary
		way, to print or display an announcement including an
		appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is
		no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a
		warranty) and that users may redistribute the program
		under these conditions, and telling the user how to
		view a copy of this License.  (Exception: if the
		Program itself is interactive but does not normally
		print such an announcement, your work based on the
		Program is not required to print an announcement.)


To me, this means that g21k must be licensed for no fee.  As has been
stated before, this would not apply to their assembler or linker as
they are not derived grom FSF source code.

I believe that at least at some point in the past, you could freely
download the binaries for all of these programs from ftp.analog.com,
however, the sources were not available there.

>
>The exact wording of the section from which you extracted that is as follows:
>
>"You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
>you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee."	
>
>
>
>>
>>and:     
>>
>>     for a charge no more than your
>>     cost of physically performing source distribution
>
>This is a restriction on the amount that a distributor may charge to provide
>you with source code after you have already purchased the binaries.  It only
>applies when binaries have been distributed without source included and only
>to those people or companies to which a binary distribution was made.  
>

But section 3 would apply since g21k fits the definition of "a work based on"
gcc 2.3.3.  Section 3 states:

	3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on
	it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under
	the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do
	one of the following:

		a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding
		machine-readable source code, which must be distributed
		under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
		customarily used for software interchange; or,

		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,

		c) Accompany it with the information you received as to
		the offer to distribute corresponding source code.
		(This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial
		distribution and only if you received the program in
		object code or executable form with such an offer, in
		accord with Subsection b above.)

I bought a SHARK EZ-KIT LITE to play around with, and it came with the
binaries for all the tools on a CDROM.  The CDROM contained a lot of
other information as well, but it was not completely full.  This means
that it would have been relatively simple to comply with 3a if Analog
Devices had wished to.  Since they have an FTP site, they could also
have made the source available for download and complied with 3b.

Instead they decided to go with 3b.  When I called and asked, I was
informed that I could get the source for the compiler, distributed on a
SUN TAR tape for $150.  Looking at it from one perspective, this does
not seem exceedingly high.  You have to pay for the media, someone's
time for making and verifying the tape, sending it out, etc.  I just
feel that they had several other alternatives.

I could probably also argue that since the executables on the CDROM were
for DOS and or Windows, that a SUN TAR tape was probably not the best
"medium for software interchange". 

Since I don't have easy access to a SUN tape drive, I never took advanatage
of their offer.  If they had made it available on CDROM or floppy, or something
else that I had access to, I would have probably bought it and did what
Egil has done. (By the way, thanks Egil)


I believe that while Analog Devices has obeyed the letter of the
GPL, they have violated the spirit.  If Analog Devices offered
their tools for Linux, this wouldn't bother me that much, I would have
gladly payed a little more to get the tools for Linux, and not really cared
if I got the source.  Perhaps with the source to g21k and some of the
freely available tools (like SHARCASM) I could get a decent development
environment under Linux.

Bill Lash
welash@xnet.com