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A comment on Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Free Software in Jeopardy. Parent comment

Re:Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Fr... by cxr on Monday June 01, 2020 @10:37AM (#23378903)
> if I have not supplied a binary to you (and hence you are not my customer), then I don't need to do anything for you. This is frequently confused by people.

The confusion is on your end. Section 3 of GPLv2 requires you make the source available to any third party, not just your customer (and GPLv3's provisions are similar).

There is exactly one set of circumstances that permit you to say "no" to any and all non-customers, and it involves not limiting the initial distribution to just binaries. That is, iff you provide binaries together with the source to the customer who's giving out copies of the binaries themselves, then it is their responsibility and not yours, and only in that instance are you allowed to turn down third-party requests for source. This would also hinge on having a customer who would be fine giving out copies of the binaries they received from you in step 1 but for some reason wants not to give out copies of the source code that they received with it.

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Re:Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Fr... by MaxBarraclough on Monday June 01, 2020 @01:02PM (#23380771)
This seems consistent with the letter of the licence. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html

See also https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.htm...

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Re:Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Fr... by cxr on Monday June 01, 2020 @07:18PM (#23385234)
I wouldn't have written my comment if it weren't.
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Re:Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Fr... by MaxBarraclough on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @05:13AM (#23389172)
Right, I was agreeing with you.
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Re:Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Fr... by mikekchar on Monday June 01, 2020 @07:27PM (#23385299)
That's a good point and I'm glad you mentioned it. However, one set of circumstances is enough :-) If you do not wish to distribute the source code to other third parties, you do not need to, as long as you distribute it to your customers. I definitely could have described that better.
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