Rebranding / Remixing / Respinning Fedora

[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

Hi All,

Regarding the legal issues of Rebranding, Remixing and Respinning
Fedora, I want to ask some questions regarding to providing the sources.

First of all there is the "genuine Fedora" branch of custom
distributions; all parts included come from Fedora (Remix), and/or it
contains updates (Respin), and it does not need any rebranding
whatsoever. In fact, we may feel like hosting, mirroring or linking to
these distributions at some point.

For these distributions, GPLv2 requires that you distribute or make
available the sources of whatever you distribute alongside the binaries,
or include instructions to obtain the sources, or (3c), provide the
instructions you have gotten yourself. For some of us, this isn't a problem.

However, if a Respin (definitely including updates) or Remix (possibly
including updates) needs to also distribute or make available the
sources, they could have pointed to the Fedora mirrors if only the
updates (and their source RPMs) wouldn't expire from these mirrors.

Having a Respin include update foo-1.0.1, which is being replaced by
update foo-1.0.2 a day later, which expires the source RPM for foo-1.0.1
as well, prevents the ones distributing the Respin or Remix from
GPL-compliance as the sources for foo-1.0.1 are no longer publicly
available. The Respin or Remix ends up to be non-distributable unless
someone finds the resources to also host the source.

Is there some kind of archive of all updates ever released? Is that
koji? Can Respinners and Remixes just point people to koji? As (afaik)
the Fedora Project releases under 3a and 3b of GPLv2, can we not make it
so people that do Respins/Remixes can use 3c? E.g., include the complete
instructions for retrieving the sources for anything the Fedora Project
releases, whether it be actual releases or updates, in the Fedora
Release Notes? It'd maybe save a lot of people a lot of trouble, and
thus enable a lot more people to start remixing Fedora and distribute
the results.

That's todays question.

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen
-kanarip