When to fork a linux distro, and general licensing questions...
September 10, 2015 6:50 AM Subscribe
I'm delivering remote training in various technologies and i've build a VM image based on Bodhi to support this. I'm curious as to whether it's best for me to fork Bodhi at this point, and what license related things I should be considering.
The environment has the necessary development environments set up, git, libraries, an editor that supports remote pair programming. It's basically a known environment for our students to work in.
I like using Bodhi for this -- it's lightweight, not a huge VM download, all that. I'd like to make these images available to a wider audience as they may be useful to someone else.
Here's my question -- is a fork and separate distro based on remote education appropriate? What licensing considerations do I have if I distribute just the virtualbox/vmware images? Anyone have any ideas on how best to approach this?
The environment has the necessary development environments set up, git, libraries, an editor that supports remote pair programming. It's basically a known environment for our students to work in.
I like using Bodhi for this -- it's lightweight, not a huge VM download, all that. I'd like to make these images available to a wider audience as they may be useful to someone else.
Here's my question -- is a fork and separate distro based on remote education appropriate? What licensing considerations do I have if I distribute just the virtualbox/vmware images? Anyone have any ideas on how best to approach this?
Best answer: The Software Freedom Law Center has a quite good guide for GPL compliance available that you should also read.
posted by saeculorum at 7:09 AM on September 10, 2015
posted by saeculorum at 7:09 AM on September 10, 2015
Best answer: Note that every Linux distribution (except maybe for a couple of fringe ones) are going to be using a lot more licenses than just the GPL. The good news is that most of those other licenses (Apache, BSD, etc) are less restrictive than the GPL, and have fewer requirements relative to forking. But the devil is in the details. If you really want to do this right, it's going to be a lot of work to validate every license of every component within the distribution, make sure you have distribution rights, and make sure you are complying. But in practice, it's probably going to be a lot simpler than that, and the biggest concern you're going to have is complying with trademark requirements, not software licensing. In a lot of Linux distributions, you can fork but you can't re-use their branding. I would probably suggest getting in touch with the people responsible for the Bodhi distribution and get their advice.
posted by tybstar at 7:19 AM on September 10, 2015
posted by tybstar at 7:19 AM on September 10, 2015
Response by poster: FWIW and for future generations:
http://forums.bodhilinux.com/index.php?/topic/12644-bodhi-linux-for-remote-tutoring-applications/
posted by jpziller at 8:30 AM on September 10, 2015
http://forums.bodhilinux.com/index.php?/topic/12644-bodhi-linux-for-remote-tutoring-applications/
posted by jpziller at 8:30 AM on September 10, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
The GNU General Public License (GPL) allows you to just distribute the images, but you must make an offer of the source code and build process necessary to make those images. The source code must include every GPLed component in the image and any component that is "derived from" a GPLed component. That includes more than just the Linux kernel, and generally includes the vast majority of the image. If a person makes a request for source code (which will happen quickly, in my experience), you are not allowed to point the person to Bodhi; you must personally give them the source code and the build process (even if you just copied them from Bodhi).
posted by saeculorum at 7:02 AM on September 10, 2015