Restriction on distribution by Novell?

[Philippe Verdy]

From: "John Cowan" <cowan at ccil.org>
> Philippe Verdy scripsit:
> 
>> Hmmm... diffs most often contain lines belonging to the GPL'ed
>> sources. Beware of the format (diffs in the common "-u" format should
>> be GPL'ed too!)
> 
> I think that would be fair use of the original if anything is.
> The contents of the original are not there for their own sake,
> but as indicators of where to patch.

"Fair use" does not exist in international copyright laws, and there's no such concept in the GPL.
Well the problem with that approach is that this would require Novell distributing its patches only as source diffs, and would then require that every updated component of registered systems be installed exclusively from two sets of files: the original GPL sources, and the Novell's exclusive patches, both stored in separate local source repositories. And this would also require installing the complete development kit (with their sources if they are GPL'ed too...).