GPL Question
 

I have a question about the GPL and I don't want "as far as I know..." or "from what I heard..." type answers. I want some one who knows what they are talking about.

My question (which may seem simple, but i'm a noob)...

If I include a COPY of the GNU GPL, can I resell someone else's Linux, e.g. If sally downloads a SuSe ISO and burns it to a CD, Can Sally sell it to Joe, if she gives Joe a copy of the GNU GPL?

I am sorry if the answer to this is obvious.

If you download a gpl copy of any linux distro or app you can sell it to whoever you want. Do a search for GPL license and it lists this fairly clearly in plain language.

According to the GPL:

So, yes, you can. However, you must make it clear that it is free software and inform them of where they can download the source code.

If the distro includes commercial software, you may have to remove it because most of it is not licensed using the gpl and redisributing it can cause you to violate the vendors license.

In fact you don't have to if you give them access to source code youself (for example on a cd). The method you describe is the easiest one and most common, but not the only one :)

Where could I get the source code?

Source code for most distros or applications is available from the developers website or on other media such as cd/dvd.

you can't do that . the GPL is "Gates Private License " ;)

Go through the GNU GPL before doing any resaling or you land yourself admist copyright laws. The distro may contain some properitry software also.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL

-Prasanta

This post substantially answere my question (posted elsewhere). For some people new to open source and in agreement with the pricipals/concept of the GNU public license there is one area not clearly explained: If you comply with the requirement to make any modifications available via download can someone demand a copy via physical disk (at reasonable cost). This would be an unreasonable request and I suspect people would not be required to comply if same sofware were available for download.

You must provide accesss to the sources *for a reasonable amount of time*. The only way to be sure of this is to provide it yourself.

Sure ... distros can be packaged and sold; happens all the time. The purpose of licenses like GPL is not to say that you can't make a profit, but that you can't make something proprietary that was derived from GPL-licensed code.

Companies contribute very valuable time and effort for "a rising tide that lifts all boats," on the legally enforceable stipulation that no one will take the work-product of their contributed efforts and turn it into a proprietary product, which of course would be a case of exploiting that material without compensation.

Remember: the "F" in FOSS is a misnomer. Open-source software most certainly isn't free, and no one should be implying that it somehow is. Hundreds of thousands of hours of work have been poured into the goodies we use every day, because it was realized that no one person or company could get the job done that needed doing, if they were obliged to singularly pay their bills and profits thereby as in the conventional business model. But many 'ones' could, and did.

That realization, coupled with several legally-proved open source license agreements, broke open the logjam that had been holding software and hardware development back for many years.

Since many software (including the kernel) is GPL version 2 -only ...yes (doing what Mara said avoids this).
GPLv2 was written before downloading sources was doable for most people.

This changed in GPL version 3 (this also counts for anything GPLv2 that doesn't include GPLv2-only)

I *really* doubt anyone would care though (...and even more if it would work in court...).[0]
Most people just ignore this rule (how else could "live-cds" exist).

[0] Linus Torvald's "GPLv2-only" claim is questionable as well.