violation of GPL for solaris binaries

[Stefan Teleman]

OK.

Here is the situation with the source code patches, and Mr. Philip 
Brown.

I do not have any CVS write permissions at KDE. So, i cannot upload 
anything anywhere. About the third week of September i wrote Stephan 
Kulow telling him that i wanted to make the source code patches 
available publicly, and asking him on how to go about it. To this 
day, i have not yet received an answer.

I have sent patches via email to a few kde members. These patches 
never made it anywhere. So, at this point, i am very discouraged 
about this whole thing, because i do not see what else i can do, and 
at the same time i get accused of violating License policies. I think 
i have been quite supportive of KDE, i have made my Sun box at home 
available to any kde member who wants to test in Solaris. I do not 
have a web server, my ISP does not allow me to do that. Nor do i have 
the financial means to set up a parallel web site to make these 
patche available, and even if i had the money to do that, i do not 
think it would be a cool thing to do to begin with. So now please 
tell me what am i supposed to do. 

Now about Mr Philip Brown and blastwave:

Mr Brown contacted me back in September, after i released 3.1.3. I did 
not contact him. He invited me to join blastwave, and make KDE 
packages available through his site. There was never any 
understanding that blastwave would have exclusive rights in 
distributing KDE Solaris binaries, and i made absolutely certain that 
that was the case, publicly. Meaning, i consider KDE the primary site 
for distributing these binaries.

In order to make all the libraries compliant with blastwave's 
directory location (/opt/csw), i had to re-port, re-compile and 
re-package about 70 different libraries -- the additional required 
libraries for running KDE. This took me the whole month of October, 
and it was a lot of work.

Two or three days ago Mr Brown made it very clear to me that all my 
work was useless, because i compiled and built these libraires with 
different compiler and linker flags than he desires. Also, he  also 
informed me that, unless i provide binaries for the SPARC and x86 
architectures (KDE is currently built for UltraSPARC), my binaries 
will not be accepted at blastwave, making my entire one month's worth 
of work pointless and a waste of time. Mr Brown was fully aware 
before contacting me that i built KDE for UltraSPARC. That is public 
knowledge.

Faced with that situation, i told Mr Brown that i will no longer 
distribute anything through his web site, and that i will have to 
re-build/re-link everything yet again, under a different directory 
tree which does not conflict with anyone else's. When informed of 
that, Mr Brown started harrassing me about source code patches for 
KDE 3.1.4. There is no Solaris binary release for 3.1.4, because of 
the problem i explained above. So i am not sure i even understand 
what Mr Brown wants. What i believe he wants is to get a hold of the 
source code patches for 3.1.4 before KDE does. I am not at all 
convinced that he is entitled to that. There are currently no patches 
available for 3.1.4, because i have not built it yet. I am stuck 
re-building these 70 extra libraries yet again.

About the binaries: what i mean by "this software is in the public 
domain" is: the _binaries_ are, and only the binaries. Meaning, i do 
not have any claims for licensing fees for using those binaries. At 
the same time, i do not set licensing policies for KDE. I do not 
represent KDE, i do not claim to represent KDE, and i cannot speak 
for KDE in any way. Even under the most liberal of interpretations, 
it could not be inferred that the 'public domain' sentence would ever 
apply to anything other than the binaries i make available.

And that's my story.

--Stefan

------

On Sunday 02 November 2003 11:59, Scott Wheeler wrote:
> Just grabbing bits and pieces from the ftp archives:
>
> === README ===
> This binary distribution contains a binary release KDE 3.1.3 ported
> to, and built for, Solaris 8 SPARC 32-bit with the Sun Forte 7
> C/C++ compiler. The specification of the build environment is:
> === COPYRIGHT ===
> Copyright (c) 2003 by Stefan Teleman under the terms of the
> GNU General Public License. This software is in the public domain.
> ===
>
> If Stefan was the sole author of this "work" then he is correct, he
> would not need to provide the associated sources.  However, in this
> case his "work" is producing binary packages of GPL'ed software
> with other persons copyrights for which the GPL says:
>
> ===
>   3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on
> it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the
> terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of
> the following:
>
>     a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding
> machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the
> terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for
> software interchange; or,
>
>     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,
>
>     c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the
> offer to distribute corresponding source code.  (This alternative
> is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
> received the program in object code or executable form with such an
> offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
> ===
>
> It seems that none of a, b, or c have been fullfilled.
>
> I would suggest that we give Stefan a chance to respond.  If the
> story is more or less correct as reported and if he's not willing
> to release the patches then we should first remove the packages
> from KDE's ftp site and then any other actions can be considered
> that are thought to be appropriate.
>
> But again, I suspect there's "another side" to this story.  :-)
>
> -Scott
>
> > Am Samstag, 1. November 2003 08:24 schrieb Philip Brown:
> > > I have noticed that you redistribute binaries of kde 3.1.3 for
> > > solaris, at
> > >
> > > ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.1.3/contrib/Solaris
> > >
> > > The binaries claim to be compiled with sun forte, which seems
> > > to be true. However, kde 3.1.3 does not normally compile with
> > > sun forte. Therefore, some additional modification to the
> > > source code had to have been required to generate the binaries.
> > >
> > > I have emailed the contributor,
> > > Stefan Teleman
> > > steleman at nyc.rr.com
> > >
> > > asking him that he make the patches available to me.
> > > He does not deny that that are patches neccessary. However, he
> > > claims that the GPL puts him under no obligation to provide me
> > > with the patches.
> > >
> > > I have attempted to point out to him that this is not true.
> > > However, he
>
> has
>
> > > threatened me with legal action if I contact him again.
> > >
> > > This leaves me only with the binaries that you are
> > > redistributing on his behalf.  According to the GPL, I believe
> > > you need to now do one of the following:
> > >
> > > a) assert under that directory that no further patches are
> > > needed to the standard KDE 3.1.3 distribution, to compile with
> > > sun forte. [which I belive is not true]
> > >
> > > b) provide the patches required in that area
> > >    [the single file in the "PATCHES" directory does NOT cover
> > > this]
> > >
> > > c) Have some reference in that directory to point the user to a
> > > place where the required patches may be acquired
> > >
> > > d) remove the binaries from your site, and associated mirror
> > > sites, since without the patches, their distribution violates
> > > the GPL.

-- 
Stefan Teleman          'Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition'
steleman at nyc.rr.com                          -Monty Python