[MPlayer-dev-eng] violation of the GPL
Billy Biggs
vektor at dumbterm.net
Thu Feb 19 00:39:50 CET 2004
Joey Parrish (joey at nicewarrior.org):
> I got an email from someone recently informing me that I am violating
> the GPL with concerns to MPlayer.
>
> I don't distribute the full source on my cygwin MPlayer webpage, just
> a patchset. This is because I don't want to keep up lots of big
> source archives that could get out of sync with MPlayer CVS.
Any time you post a binary the complete source used to build that
binary should be posted with it. This is because if I need to change
something in a (potentially very old!) binary I have installed, I can
save the full source used and I know it will both compile and work
without modifications.
So, there are practical reasons why the GPL has this requirement.
> My questions are:
> 1) Do you (anyone) have a problem with my policy?
I think I do in principle, FWIW. It's a growing problem too,
especially with lots of people distributing 'live CDs' and not having
corresponding source CDs. So, you're not alone in finding the
requirement inconvenient (or not understanding it/respecting it!).
-Billy
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