GPL and storage requirements

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Mar 24, 2007, "Luis Villa" <luis at tieguy.org> wrote:

> I believe non-commercial mirrors are not required to keep source. They
> need only "accompany  [the Program] with the information [they]
> received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code."
> (Sec. 3(c)).

IANAL, but Fedora distributes code under 3(a) (sources along with
binaries), not 3(b), so third-parties don't get to use 3(c), they must
use either 3(a) or 3(b).

Using 3(a) means Fedora can blow away anything it carries any time it
wants, no further requirements.

Using 3(b) would mean we'd have to keep, at least internally, the
corresponding sources of GPLed and LGPLed code in every binary
released package, for at least 3 years after we take it out of the
download site, just in case someone asks us for it.  AFAIK, mirrors
who carry our binaries without sources enter precisely this kind of
obligation.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}