Distributing my Application inside a Debian Virtual Machine Image-- How to meet GPL obligations?
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Published on 2011-06-30T16:25:53Z
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I have a Linux application I've developed, and I have created a standalone VMWare Image that people can download to try out the application without needing to install and configure a Linux Server. I created this VMWare Image by starting with a base Debian system, installing a bunch of packages and then configuring all the packages and daemons my application depends on. Upon load, the VMWare Image boots right into an X Server running only my application and no Window manager, so its more of a "Virtual Appliance" than a normal Linux Desktop environment. Users generally will never see a command prompt or any application other than my own. (My application itself I have a handle on the licensing issues of)
Now I would like to distribute this image, but I'm not sure how to meet my GPL (and other licenses the various Debian components are released under) Obligations. As I understand it, I have two primary obligations to meet.
Providing Copyright and License Information for each component I use. As I understand it, all the information I am required to present is located in the /usr/share directory in the Debian, but since my users generally will never touch a console or terminal, they will never see this. Does providing a text file containing a concatenation of all the files inside /usr/share meet this obligation
Making source code available for all components I distribute. Since I am not creating the image from source, but from binary packages, I can't provide the actual source code that results in exactly my image being generated. Does providing an ftp mirror and an offer to send that mirror on DVDs of the Debian source debs for all the packages I use meet this obligation?
Anything Else I'm required to do to legally distribute this image?
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