[cobalt-users] procmail and other GPL source...

[Charlie Summers <charlie@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Folks;

   I was talking to the current maintainer of procmail about the
little...crisis I had over the weekend (thanks to Thom, by the way, for
helping me get out of it) trying to upgrade procmail. He made a rather
interesting point - since procmail is licensed under the GPL (ok, it's
actually dual-licensed, but it would be apparently easier to follow the GPL
than the Artistic License), Cobalt/Sun is likely legally required to supply
the source used to generate the procmail binary on-demand, as well as ALL of
the source used to generate ALL of the other GPL-licensed binaries it is
using. Any alterations to the source code to these binaries (for example, the
C code required to allow procmail to follow sym links from /var/spool/mail to
/home/spool/mail) would automatically be covered by the same GPL license, and
NOT otherwise protected. (Basically, Sun owns the changes, but must make the
source code available for others to modify as well.)

   So maybe the next time you try to update a binary and the thing blows up
for no d*mned good reason other than Cobalt being propriatary, it might be
interesting to demand from Sun's Cobalt division the original source code to
the binary in question...and if anyone knows a good intellectual property
attorney, it might make for a fun afternoon in conference with Sun's lawyers.
;)

         Charlie