[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] GPL non-compliance, was Re: [SLOBS] GPLv3

[Chris Ball]

Hi,

On Wed, Apr 20 2011, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote:
> AFAIK (please correct me) Uruguay is not providing code, thus in
> violation of GNU license, and this situation has not been solved after
> several years.

Which code are you talking about?

> With GPL 3 will the Uruguay security code be considered a System
> Library and thus exempt from providing code? That might be an elegant
> way out from what I believe has been their systematic non-compliance
> in this respect, and maybe get them to open the rest (which is silly,
> as the machines would still be blocked...)

I don't understand.  If you're talking about security code that Ceibal
has written then they're the copyright holder, and they're under no
obligation to choose to release the source to it.  The GPL doesn't
compel the original authors of code to do anything unless they are
linking their code against a GPL-covered work.

I don't think Ceibal's security code is linked to any GPL-covered work,
and don't know why anyone would have that intuition.  I've never
actually seen their code, though.

If you're talking about Ceibal modifications to the Sugar core, then
they're surely available by virtue of being shipped in Python source
form in Ceibal's images, which satisfies the GPL.

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>   <http://printf.net/>
One Laptop Per Child