[Fedora-packaging] Shipping only binaries for open source software

[David Nalley]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Shakthi Kannan <shakthimaan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to know is there a way in Fedora to ship only binaries of
> a free/open source software.
>
> Upstream releases the sources under a free/open source software
> license, but, would like one to register (for free) at their website
> before downloading the source. They want to be able to track who
> downloaded the sources.
>
> So, would it be possible to ship such software as binaries in Fedora,
> without "yumdownloader --source" providing the sources?


In a word: No.

The longer answer is that this might be technically legal (depending
on the license), but Fedora would never do so.
Access to source (including the SRPMs we use to build binaries) is
effectively philosophically non-negotiable. Additionally the process
by which software gets into Fedora demands access to source, from the
package review, to building in koji, etc, and at all the points along
the way that source is accessible to the world.

--David