🚀 go-pugleaf

The GPL stems from the avowed goal of the FSF to make sources available to
everybody, for incremental improvement.

To encourage this, it contains three provisions (simplifying):

@ anybody who has a copy of GPL sources may make other copies

@ GPL sources may be redistributed only if covered by the GPL

@ GPL sources may be redistributed only along with other GPL software

This is so that if anybody 'adds value' to GPL software, everybody can look
at their work, and add further value, without restrictions.

The GPL is concerned only with the sources; you can do more or less what you
want with executables, even if they include compiled versions of GPL
software, except that you must be ready to furnish the relative sources.

In practice a commercial supplier could count on virtually every one of
their customers not to exercise their option to bother to ask for the
sources and working from them; most customers would just buy binaries.
There are two potential objections:

@ If the supplier were to add value to the source, competitors could just
ask for the complete sources, compile them and then undercut the prices for
the binaries, without adding value of their own.

@ If the binaries were freely copiable, it would be hard for the supplier to
recover the costs of producing them.

I would like a discussion on the issue of whether the GPL should have
contained the following two provisions, to allow:

1) That sources be supplied under the GPL to third parties under the
condition that binaries derived from them would not be redistributed to
other parties, and a similar condition applied to other parties to which the
sources were redistributed.

2) That binaries derived from GPL sources be supplied to third parties under
the condition that they not be copied themselves.

    Note that a user could still ask for sources, and derive any number of
    binaries for own use, if so inclined.

This probably would greatly encourage a cottage industry of supplying weel
packaged, cheap binaries from GPL sources to all those that don't want to
bother with sources, without in any way restricting their circulation to
those that would bother. It is also in the spirit of the GPL allowing and
actually encouraging the sale of services connected with GPL software.

    If the binaries were not packaged well, or were not cheap, the customers
    could always overcome their aversion to the bother of producing binaries
    for themselves, and just ask for the sources. Conversely, given the very
    large expense this usually entails, customers would be tempted by the
    availability of cheap and well packaged binaries to buy them. It would
    also encourage binary suppliers to offer site licences for their
    binaries, to get some revenue out of customers with a large enough
    internal base to make it otherwise worthwhile for them to duplicate
    thenmselves the compilation effort.
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk