Re: Emacs 23.4 Updated Windows Binaries published

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Lennart Borgman writes:

 > I can't see that this in a legal way prevents from pointing to sources
 > that is not owned by the distributor.

What's unclear about

 > > and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the
 > > same way through the same place at no further charge.

?

You must place the source at the same place as the object being
offered.

 > And when it comes to making the code easily accessible would not
 > something like DOI be useful? (http://www.doi.org/)

No, you're missing the point here.  Any old source won't do.  The
exact source used to produce the binaries you offer, including any
script etc. required to produce the same binaries, must be provided.

Sure, you *could* use DOI to point to that, but if you fail to update
the DOI pointer when you upgrade the binary, you're in violation of
the GPL.  So this really doesn't save you anything, except a few bytes
of disk space and a few CPU cycles.  The human effort required is the
same.  One Make target can automatically (1) produce the binary, (2)
tar and upload the source, and (3) tar and upload the binary,
automatically satisfying the GPL requirements in this respect.  Thus,
the GPL requirements are *not* burdensome, given modern prices for CPU
and disk, and even bandwidth (you can always offer a "stealth primary"
for both object and source to selected mirrors, and let the general
public download from those mirrors).