NewsForge: FSF asks Lindows, “Where’s the source?”

“Bradley Kuhn, vice president of the Free Software Foundation,
says the organization is contacting LindowsOS representatives
because the company has not included source code with its ‘sneak
preview’ releases. Lindows CEO Michael Robertson says his company
will comply with the GPL when the product is released to the
public.

“Kuhn says a Lindows insider tipped the FSF off to the
possibility of missing source code. Lindows insiders are those who
have registered and paid a $99 fee to receive beta releases of
LindowsOS and other non-public information. LindowsOS is a
distribution based on the Linux kernel, which is licensed under the
GNU General Public License. The GPL states, in part, that the
program instructions in their original form as written by the
programmer (source code) must be available to users of the program.
The GPL also requires that users be allowed to copy, modify and
redistribute the program freely, but they must in turn provide the
source code.

“Robertson does not deny that the source code for LindowsOS
isn’t included in either of the two beta releases. ‘It’s a work in
progress. We’re hopeful our first release will happen around the
middle of the year. When we release an official version, all the
GPL pieces will be properly distributed…'”

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