Re: [Monotone-devel] mingw-instructions

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sun, Jan 09, 2011 at 05:16:23AM -0500, Stephen Leake wrote:
> Timothy Brownawell <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > On 01/08/2011 06:19 PM, Stephen Leake wrote:
> >
> >> Correct. But it would be nice to document how the executables on our
> >> download page are built. In fact, that's a requirement of the GPL 3
> >> license
> >
> > Some of our downloads like the Windows installer bundle the libraries we
> > use. So for any copyleft libraries, we really ought to actually host the
> > source for the version used.
> 
> I believe the actual requirements of GPL 2
> (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt, item 3) are that the source be
> available, and that we tell people how to get it. So I think the current
> INSTALL_windows_native.txt is ok in that regard.

I seem to remember something in the old GPL saying that the instructions 
for getting the source had to be valid for two years.  And some 
discussion from the FSF saying that thoe source for the *same version* 
be available.  So if after 18 months someone came looking for the source 
code for the library, he has to be able to get at
 18-month-old source code.  Not that the guy might not prefer current 
source code, of course, but it's the code that produced the binary he 
got that the licence guarantees.

It seemed logical to me, but probably awkward in practice, unless you 
ship the source code with the binary.

-- hendrik