Subject: debian-cd: Debian-cd website offers binaries but not sources, violating GPL Package: debian-cd Severity: serious Justification: Policy 2.1 "The program must include source code"
I'm looking for the source code that matches the binary releases that Debian provides. It is not in an obvious place. There is no "written offer of source code" as required by the GPL when you distribute binaries without sources, nor are the sources available "next to" the binaries online. >From the root of the Debian distribution, http://www.debian.org, I followed the sidebar link "Getting Debian: CD ISO images" to http://www.debian.org/CD/ . From there I followed the links to "Download CD images with jigdo" and also "Download CD images with BitTorrent". I'll follow these one by one below. Jigdo: http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/ The page contains all these offers of binary files: Official images * Official jigdo files for the "stable" release on CD: [alpha] [arm] [hppa] [i386] [ia64] [m68k] [mips] [mipsel] [powerpc] [sparc] [s390] * Official jigdo files for the "stable" release on DVD: [alpha] [arm] [hppa] [i386] [ia64] [m68k] [mips] [mipsel] [powerpc] [sparc] [s390] But it contains no links at all to "[source]" to get the Source CDs or DVDs. By messing with the URLs provided under these links, I determined that Source CD jigdos/templates are actually being generated -- but there are no links to them. For example, the [i386] DVD is at this URL: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/jigdo-dvd/ If I replace "i386" with "source" in that URL: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/source/jigdo-dvd/ then I find the appropriate files. The fix is to simply add a "[source]" link that goes to that URL. (You can't expect an ordinary user to start hacking up the URLs hidden behind the links in order to get access to the sources that the GPL requires Debian to provide.) There should be two [source] links, one for DVDs and one for CDs. BitTorrent: http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/ Same thing. It lists: # Official torrents for the stable release on CD [alpha] [arm] [hppa] [i386] [ia64] [m68k] [mips] [mipsel] [powerpc] [sparc] [s390] # Official torrents for the stable release on DVD [i386] [powerpc] But there's no [source] link. Here, [i386] on DVD links to: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r0a/i386/bt-dvd/ Changing that to: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r0a/source/bt-dvd/ That file doesn't exist. However, there is an offer of source on CD (not DVD) via BitTorrent: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r0a/source/bt-cd The fix is to create a [source] link that goes there from the list of CD releases. (And ideally to create a [source] link in the DVD releases, that leads to a newly generated set of bt-dvd source Torrents.) I've been surprised at the degree to which Debian users seem oblivious to the existence or nonexistence source code. They blithely install binary packages with the same abandon as Microsoft users. The reason I want to get Source CDs now is because I frequently find that source packages that match my installed binaries have been withdrawn from the mirrors or are otherwise not available when I want/need them. It's particularly ironic that Debian, the most conscientious creators of truly-free-like-free-speech Linux distributions are so lax when it comes to actually following the GPL and making the source code available to recipients of binary releases. Thanks for making these simple fixes to your web pages. John Gilmore PS: There's a minor error in http://www.debian.org/CD/; it says that jigdo is "is the only way to download Debian DVD images." That is no longer true now that Torrents of (some) DVDs are available. -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.11-1-k7-smp Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
