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bastibasti
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Joined: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 586
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 Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:26 am Post subject: redistribute gentoo? |
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| Hi iam planning to put my gentoo (livecd) on my web page. Is this legal or do i have to be aware of anything? (I havent changed anything on the structure of the system or sourcecode. |
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jabol
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Joined: 05 Oct 2005
Posts: 269
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:49 am Post subject: |
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Don't relicense it, give credit to original distributors and you should be fine.
You actually should read all licenses for each single package and remove those which violate things before redistributing. eix could probably help you in that. With all besides of GPL, BSD, MIT, X11 you should be wary. |
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enderandrew
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Joined: 25 Oct 2005
Posts: 731
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:57 am Post subject: Re: redistribute gentoo? |
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| bastibasti wrote: | | Hi iam planning to put my gentoo (livecd) on my web page. Is this legal or do i have to be aware of anything? (I havent changed anything on the structure of the system or sourcecode. |
I'm pretty sure Gentoo (like most of the packages it contains) is under the GPL license, which means you can freely distribute it. Even if you had changed the code (which you have the right to do), you can freely redistribute it. In fact, the only major restriction is if you do alter it, and someone wants to see you changes, you are required to share your changes.
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steveL
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Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 5153
Location: The Peanut Gallery
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 10:56 am Post subject: Re: redistribute gentoo? |
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| enderandrew wrote: | | I'm pretty sure Gentoo (like most of the packages it contains) is under the GPL license, which means you can freely distribute it. |
It is, and you can, but as jabol pointed out, some packages in Gentoo are not distributable in that way, since they are under different licenses. I believe all the stuff on the LiveCD is fine, as Gentoo is already distributing them. Might be worth checking with the gentoo-nfp mailing list.
| Quote: | | Even if you had changed the code (which you have the right to do), you can freely redistribute it. In fact, the only major restriction is if you do alter it, and someone wants to see you changes, you are required to share your changes. |
Also, if you distribute binaries from modified sources you must make those sources freely available. |
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bastibasti
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Joined: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 586
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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no its not about making profit.
We might have some webspace in near future, and me and some mates use gentoo, but sick of reinstalling (especially if you need a quick-install on a 233Mhz machine) and we think about providing several stages (stage3+bootloaders+kernel, or prebuild with gnome and kde standard packages) for several machines, (486, pentium, pentium4) and so on.
As we use these kind of tar's for ourselves and put them on a webserver, why not making them accessible to mor people? |
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vonr
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 300
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 4:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Depending on your country and the package in question, have a look at the "bindist" USE-flag; it is designed for situations such as this afaik. |
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BitJam
Advocate
Joined: 12 Aug 2003
Posts: 2513
Location: Silver City, NM
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 5:24 pm Post subject: Re: redistribute gentoo? |
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| enderandrew wrote: | | In fact, the only major restriction is if you do alter it, and someone wants to see you changes, you are required to share your changes. |
Clarification: if you alter it and distribute binaries you must also make the source available (to the people you distributed the binaries to). You are under no obligation if you make changes but don't distribute binaries. You have no obligations to a someone who wants to see your code if you haven't given them the binary. |
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mikegpitt
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Joined: 22 May 2004
Posts: 3224
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:16 pm Post subject: Re: redistribute gentoo? |
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| BitJam wrote: | | enderandrew wrote: | | In fact, the only major restriction is if you do alter it, and someone wants to see you changes, you are required to share your changes. |
Clarification: if you alter it and distribute binaries you must also make the source available (to the people you distributed the binaries to). You are under no obligation if you make changes but don't distribute binaries. You have no obligations to a someone who wants to see your code if you haven't given them the binary. |
This is only true if you "publicly distribute binaries". I have edited some GPL stuff int he past and given it to friends... I'm fairly sure the FSF won't be knocking on my door.
If you publicly distribute your own version of some GPL app then yes you need to make the source code public... in fact even if you just distribute a GPL app without modifications you need to make the source code available. Note that making it available doesn't mean that you need to publish it on a website, you just need to offer the code somehow for interested people.
To answer the original posters question, it sounds perfectly reasonable what you are proposing. |
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BitJam
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Joined: 12 Aug 2003
Posts: 2513
Location: Silver City, NM
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:57 pm Post subject: Re: redistribute gentoo? |
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| mikegpitt wrote: | This is only true if you "publicly distribute binaries".
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Not true. As I tried to explain above, if you give just one person the binary then they have the right to get the source code too. But you don't have to make the source available to everyone just to the folks you gave binaries to.
| Quote: | | I have edited some GPL stuff int he past and given it to friends... I'm fairly sure the FSF won't be knocking on my door. |
I agree that your friends would probably not get the FSF involved, but they still have the right to the source if you only gave them binaries. |
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mikegpitt
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Joined: 22 May 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 2:32 am Post subject: Re: redistribute gentoo? |
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| BitJam wrote: | | mikegpitt wrote: | This is only true if you "publicly distribute binaries".
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Not true. As I tried to explain above, if you give just one person the binary then they have the right to get the source code too. But you don't have to make the source available to everyone just to the folks you gave binaries to.
| Quote: | | I have edited some GPL stuff int he past and given it to friends... I'm fairly sure the FSF won't be knocking on my door. |
I agree that your friends would probably not get the FSF involved, but they still have the right to the source if you only gave them binaries. |
Yeah, you are right... I wasn't really thinking about it that way. I was basically saying that if you modify something and give it to someone else, you don't need to publicly offer the source to others. |
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bastibasti
Guru
Joined: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 586
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| Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 6:10 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | (I havent changed anything on the structure of the system or sourcecode.) |
The question was NOT about changing the code. |
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kernelOfTruth
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Joined: 20 Dec 2005
Posts: 6111
Location: Vienna, Austria; Germany; hello world :)
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d2_racing
Bodhisattva
Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada
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| Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:50 am Post subject: |
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Yeah I used your LiveCD when I installed a Gentoo box with a Jmicro chipset  |
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enderandrew
l33t
Joined: 25 Oct 2005
Posts: 731
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| Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 4:04 am Post subject: |
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Waits for the secret police to drag KoT off into the darkness....
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kernelOfTruth
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