Hacker News Reader

Comment by fistan | Hacker News Reader

1. You didn't have to tell anyone you were a lawyer. Just speak and it will remove all doubt.

2. Who you are is irrelevant to the original comment...

3. Your third statement only affirms your status of lawyer as you are twisting a statement to suit yours.

original statement: It's not as if they were making us a gift... As soon as they sold their first device it was required by the Linux kernel GPL2 license to release the kernel source code.

Your version: <He> implied Google has some affirmative obligation to place the source code on the internet...Google definitely has no affirmative obligation to place the GPL'd source code on the internet as was implied

I still can't see how releasing the source on the internet was implied regardless of your lawyering... ;)

View on HN

1. Fair enough

2. I only pointed it out to show that I actually do GPL compliance all the time, and, more importantly, because one of the siblings said "Do you work for Google by any chance? It's good manners to technically declare any conflict of interest. Not technically required, but technically suggested by the technicians at HN".

Though i've mentioned in numerous comments that I work for Google, I felt it only fair to mention it again.

3. I have twisted nothing, IMHO, only asserted there was an implication. That is not twisting words. That is claiming he implied something.

In any case, the original statement is actually factually incorrect, even if you remove the clear implication. Let's assume for a second that we remove the internet part and stick with "obligation to release". It's still wrong, as there is no obligation to release anything, only one to make a written offer. That is not the same obligation as "release source code". The have an obligation to honor that written offer, which may later result in a release, but the obligation to make a written offer is not the same as an obligation to release.

(not to mention that twisting the language of the GPL to imply an obligation to make a written offer is the same as an obligation to release code, as done by my parent, shows that it's not just lawyers who do it ...)

> The have an obligation to honor that written offer, which may later result in a release, but the obligation to make a written offer is not the same as an obligation to release.

The distinction appears to be academic at best, and therefore your objection to the grand-grand-whatever-parent seems pointless - thus the confusion here.

edit : just saw your clarification as to why you made the comment in the first place. Fair enough.

FWIW: It turns out not to be academic in practice.

About 25-30% of the complaints about GPL violations i've seen (for example, on gpl-violations mailing lists, though at least there, there are more valid ones recently) are actually cases where the company has made a written offer, and the person's complaint is this is a GPL violation and they should have released the source instead.

Of course, this has changed over the years for the worse (in the sense that the percentage of actual compliance seems to be dropping), but it's still not uncommon.

If you make me a written offer to provide source code and then I follow up and write to you asking for the source code, and then following that you ship me a CD with source code on it, for all intents and purposes you have released the source code to me. I'm pretty sure that the definition of "release" is the problem in this thread.

I have 2 different ways to respond...

1. It is required the offer be made, there is reasonable probability that the offer will be accepted and Once accepted google is bound to meet this obligation.

Wouldn't that mean there is a reasonable probability that google would be required to release?

2. if not... ill append the original comment myself for clarity... cause me and that guy are tight...

What he meant to say was: "It's not as if they were making us a gift... As soon as they sold their first device it was required by the Linux kernel GPL2 license to release the kernel source code [if an offer they are required to make is accepted]"

Wouldn't that be require to release by proxy anyway...

It's like I always tell my mother in law that the door is open. In fact I am required to say that the door is always open...

I can prey that the soul sucking spawn of the nether realms never comes knocking but in effect I am obligated to provide.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com