UnitedLinux violating GPL?

Anybody know where the source rpm for UnitedLinux kernel is? [to be distinguished from kernel-source rpm]

AFAICS they are not distributing source code to their published kernel binaries... which is a very obvious GPL violation.

I'm also surprised the even-more-pro-GPL-than-me people have not jumped on UnitedLinux for not distributing source code.

Jeff, looking for useful [rumored] drivers/net patches

Jeff,

They only have to provide it if someone asks for it. I suggest sending them a request asking for it to be disclosed and copy LKML on the request.

:-)

Jeff
(a great name to have)

I had hoped that a member in good standing of the Linux community would not put such roadblocks in place. :(

agreed :)

Jeff

With all due respect, I believe that the terms of the GPL only require them to make it available to people who have the binaries, and only then upon request.

What exactly do you mean by "are not distributing"?

Cheers,

Philip

Have you actually asked for the source?

} Anybody know where the source rpm for UnitedLinux kernel is?
} [to be distinguished from kernel-source rpm]
}
} AFAICS they are not distributing source code to their published kernel } binaries... which is a very obvious GPL violation.
}
} I'm also surprised the even-more-pro-GPL-than-me people have not jumped } on UnitedLinux for not distributing source code.
}
} Jeff, looking for useful [rumored] drivers/net patches
}
}
}
} -
} To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in } the body of a message to [email protected]
} More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
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Not a source RPM but you can get the source and patches in a tarball at ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/mantel/next/ those tarballs are what are used to build the RPMS in that directory and all but certain those RPMS are the same as the ones recently released for testing to ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/commercial/Oracle/sles-8/kern el/

I think the above will get you there and if not I'm sure they will provide the source if asked (which I think meets the letter of the law in the GPL). Perhaps they just haven't got them posted in a more obvious location yet.

Later,
Tom

If you look at ftp.suse.com/unitedlinux/1.0/src there is a file kernel-source....nosrc.rpm which contains all the kernel patches.

    GertJan

The complaint is valid, it should be advertised better, I had to look myself, but I believe that ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/unitedlinux/1.0/src/kernel-source-2.4.19.SuSE-82.nosrc.rpm is what you are looking for.

I've forwarded the request because I believe we can and should do better, but I hope the complaint of a GPL violation has been settled ;-)

Sincerely,
Lars Marowsky-Brée <[email protected]>

Principal Squirrel 
SuSE Labs - Research & Development, SuSE Linux AG
  
"If anything can go wrong, it will." "Chance favors the prepared (mind)."
  -- Capt. Edward A. Murphy            -- Louis Pasteur

Yes, thanks much.

Jeff

Jeff,

I do not understand what this means. Just because they did not volunteer it does not imply some sort of conspiracy. There are a lot of patches I make locally for my work, but I don't just throw everyone of them out to the whole planet since a lot of them would probably get rejected, and most folks probably could care less. At any rate, I was not being an obstructist or anything. Perhaps they overlooked it or perhaps it's available somewhere else. Simplest approach is always the best -- just ask them and post to LKML so they know other folks are probably interested.

Some of the patches I;ve made to Alan's code I am certain he would look at and say something like "well there's goes Jeff again smoking his pipe" or something -- but of course only in the nicest sort of way.

:-)

Jeff

Why don't you _read_ the GPL instead of making wrong statements?

Section 3 clearly states that your "upon request" is wrong, the part that matches here is:

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,

cu
Adrian

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Further, they only have to provide the source to those they
distribute the software to. So go buy a copy, ask for the source then come share with us too.

If people starting doing that what would be have to argue about?

} Why don't you _read_ the GPL instead of making wrong statements?

if they supply the kernel source rpm, how are they in violation? Since you can compile a kernel from the source rpm.

Then again, I shouldn't be feeding another open-source-uber-alles flamefest on lkml, should I?

-- John E. Jasen ([email protected])
-- User Error #2361: Please insert coffee and try again.

Read the GPL :) The source code "preferred form" is clearly not an on-disk kernel tree with no information about the changes [patches] that were processed in a specific sequence, to produce that end result.

Anyway, I would rather the thread die, since it is clear that they are _not_ in violation of the GPL, and the source code is available. :)

Jeff

Hi,

Sure, it's here:

ftp.suse.com:/pub/unitedlinux/1.0/src/kernel-source-2.4.19.SuSE-82.nosrc.rpm

This RPM contains the individual patches as well as the specfile to create the kernel-source.rpm. It's only missing the vanilla kernel source tarball in order to save space (this tarball is available on every other ftp server in the internet anyway).

For creation of the individual binary kernel RPMs you need the following source RPMs which are of course also available:

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        18972 Oct 21 21:45 k_athlon-2.4.19-111.src.rpm
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       168055 Oct 21 22:28 k_debug-2.4.19-79.src.rpm
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       186467 Oct 21 22:04 k_deflt-2.4.19-120.src.rpm
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       178477 Oct 21 22:04 k_psmp-2.4.19-115.src.rpm
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       185329 Oct 21 22:21 k_smp-2.4.19-113.src.rpm

Any chance you could check the facts before accusing people publically?

Because they are probably not too lazy to check the facts before offending people.

                                                                  -o)
    Hubert Mantel              Goodbye, dots...                   /\\
                                                                 _\_v

                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^                          ^^^^^^^

Revealing...

Regards
Henning

Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen       -- Geschaeftsfuehrer
INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH     [email protected]

Am Schwabachgrund 22  Fon.: 09131 / 50654-0   [email protected]
D-91054 Buckenhof     Fax.: 09131 / 50654-20   

If the binary can be recreated from the source in the kernel-source RPM, they aren't in violation. Sure, having a look at the non-official patches they apply would be nice, but not mandated by GPL.
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513

[ disclaimer: the UnitedLinux issue in the subject is already resolved ]

This is wrong. Section 3 of the GPL says that you have to accompany the binaries either with the complete source code (and this includes all patches you have applied) or 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".

cu
Adrian

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

Actually the reverse could be much more easily said to be true. If
they only supplied the src.rpm, and not the source rpm more people would scream than the reverse. The number of people who know how to produce a custom kernel from a src.rpm is fairly limited. Keep in mind most of UL's customer are not kernel hackers.

Of course the correct thing to do is simply provide both and make
people happy. A determined person can still get what ever they want out of either form. Making it hard just leads to your customers and the community hating you.

There is no such thing as obsolete hardware.
Merely hardware that other people don't want.
(The Second Rule of Hardware Acquisition)
Sam Flory  <[email protected]>

They also violate the GPL by including non-GPL compliant code (openssl and the unisys es7000 support) in their tree, so..

Did you ever think UL was more than an OEM agreement + a marketing gag? :)

Send your general counsel, and stop advertising, please!

Google Search: UnitedLinux violating GPL (p1 of 6)

Searched the web for UnitedLinux violating GPL. Results 1 - 10 of about 136. Search took 0.10 seconds.

This will be number 137 or 138 but who cares!

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

Unisys gave people their code to use GPL. At worst the mythical 'suse evil empire' forgot to fix a comment or two.

Right.

Great! The "complete source code" for the kernel does include each and every single patch applied since linux-0.0.1? Guess I'll have to complain to a certain Torvalds then...

Don't be silly. "Complete source code" means the source needed to rebuild the binary, nothing more. If that is a mangled version derived from some other source, so be it. You are explicitly allowed to distribute changed versions, but only under GPL. [IANAL etc, so...]
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513

I disagree. A preprocessed source file with all the variables renamed to random strings would suffice to rebuild the binary, and is obviously not acceptable -- being able to rebuild the binary is not the only criterion.

"The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it."

Note that the GPL doesn't say you have to give it in the preferred form for _building_ it, but the preferred form for _modifying_ it.

In the opinion of many devlopers, the preferred form of the Linux kernel for maintaining it is a set of individual patches against the closest 'official' release, and not a tarball containing already-modified code.

--
dwmw2

Hi,

So you are saying that Alan Cox is violating the GPL since he releases his -ac kernels only as one single monolithic patch against the vanilla tree, not as individual patches (like Andrea Arcangeli does for example)?

I think the motivation for this ridiculous thread is very obvious.

                                                                  -o)
    Hubert Mantel              Goodbye, dots...                   /\\
                                                                 _\_v

[...]

That isn't "source" in my book.

Right. And you can take the kernel-source RPM, and update drivers &c just as you would on the original source + patchsets

That is exactly that: An opinion (or preference) of many (or so you do think). Not legally binding, AFAIKS...
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513

I think Dave needs to type "man diff" 8)

I think Dave needs a diff that allows me to keep as many patches in sync as bk lets me. We don't all have your superhuman patch-fu Alan 8-)

I do periodic GNU diffs of the 'big bundle o' patches'. There are even split up versions of the patches. All there to see at k.o
The merges Ive done with bitkeeper to Linus recently have been diffs already posted to the 2.4 commit list. Asides from the AGP bits, which were 99% already posted to linux-kernel. The remainder were trivial things, and they showed up in -bk an hour or so later anyways..

Dave

| Dave Jones.        http://www.codemonkey.org.uk
| SuSE Labs

I have everything I need, thanks. I'll be going through the drivers/net bits in the next week or two, and see what's useful for mainline.

Jeff

Hi!

So... Do you have everything you want or do you want something more?

Pavel

Worst form of spam? Adding advertisment signatures ala sourceforge.net.
What goes next? Inserting advertisment *into* email?