Subject: Re: IESG Response to Copyright appeal

From: "James P. Salsman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 01:50:21 -0700 (PDT)

Valdis,

There is an easy way around your problem.

>... even though I made *no* source changes, I asked (and was told)
> that just pointing at ftp.gnu.org for the source wasn't acceptable)....

Here is what the GPL says:

|   ... 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....

You might not, according to the FSF, be able to "give" someone a 
file by pointing them to it, but you can offer them to a web page 
that will program their browser to get the file for them:

<html> <head>
<title> obtaining offered GPL source code for Make v. 3.77 </title>
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5; URL=ftp://ftp.digex.net/pub/gnu/make/make-3.77.tar.gz">
</head> <body>
<h1> Please stand by... </h1>
Thank you for your request for the GNU Make version 3.77 source code
provided at this web site as described in the written offer that you 
received with your GNU Public Licenced software.  A gziped archive of
the source code distribution will be delivered to you in five seconds.
</body> </html>

I promise that the FSF will not sue you for that.  I am positive that 
the only reason the FSF people do not allow pointers is because their 
canonical ftp.gnu.org server is constantly saturated, even at a 
quarter to four in the morning.  Just pick one of the heftier mirrors 
and everyone will be happy.

Cheers,
James