Ubuntu Open to Aiding Derivative Distributions

lisah writes "Bruce Byfield wrote recently of a GPL requirement that may have unintended consequences for derivative distributions. Ubuntu's technical leader Matt Zimmerman responded with the suggestion that the folks at Ubuntu might be able to assist. From the article: 'It's less clear to me whether a legal agreement with the upstream distributor could satisfy this requirement," Zimmerman says, talking about the obligation to provide source code for everything that a distro ships, "but given that Ubuntu is already obligated to continue to distribute source code for as long as we distribute binaries, it's possible that we could offer that kind of assistance if it would help.'" Newsforge is also owned by OSTG.

Comments

Re:Storm in a teacup

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandwidth and organization. If you're not already distributing them, then chances are these might be very real concerns for you. Bandwidth might already be tight and this would make it tighter, and organizing it all may require manpower you might not have. Though this might not sound all that difficult, remember that many distros ship with thousands of packages, many of which end up changing version numbers on a regular basis.