Aside from whether or not he was being an ass, he was incorrect. The license are rights the author grants other people. The author can release binaries without sources or under any license they desire; just because they also release it under the LGPL does not compel them to provide sources when they distribute it.

This is true, as long as the "author" is a single person or someone who has been assigned the rights to all the code by everyone else who has contributed.

If you are releasing work on a (A/L)GPL project you started, but others contributed to without giving you other rights, you can't distribute their contributions without releasing the source.

Not trying to excuse this demand, just pointing out the technicalities. The most important point in my eyes is that with no evidence of intent to keep the source concealed for a significant amount of time, the idea that anyone would pursue a complaint under the GPL in this situation is nonsense.

It should have been "When will a source release for this be available", but the user decided to be an asshole instead and make a demand by invoking the license—even if this was required, it was stupid in context.

Exactly. so many people don't have a clue about GPL and LGPL. If you're the originator you have more rights than people who you make it available to.

Regardless of the legal situation, it would be very unusual to release something under a GPL-like license without the source, since then no one else could comply with the license since they would be unable to provide the modified source.

I think we can agree that it would not at all be weird to expect that GPL-licensed project would provide the source. Any project with multiple contributors may be legally compelled to do so. Simply asking for it is probably not being a complete ass, even if the author was wrong about the legal ramifications.

At most it could perhaps be "annoying" or a "slight ass". Being a "complete ass" would perhaps be insisting after an initial request was rebuffed or whatever.

> Regardless of the legal situation, it would be very unusual to release something under a GPL-like license without the source, since then no one else could comply with the license since they would be unable to provide the modified source.

Each releases of the software can have different licenses. This means that if the author released a new version of the software binary without the source code nor any copyright notices (like Gorden did) it is not yet released under LGPL. So nobody need to comply LGPL until he releases the source code with the license.

Even if the binary is released under LGPL without the source code, although it is odd, people still can comply the License because it is LGPL - people just need to provide a way how to link the new binary.