You don't even have to get that far, you just have to minimally comprehend the bit that the blurb quotes from the article: "Emissions from drilling, including fracking, and leaks from transmission pipes totaled 225 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents during 2011, second only to power plants".

Contracts signed under duress are often void, as are contracts with unconscionable terms.

Were Aaron Greene and Morgan Gliedman arrested recently for legitimate dissent? Or were they arrested for illegally possessing destructive devices (and apparently planning to use them against others)? Also, don't you find it ironic that OWS is so heavily staffed by children of privilege like those two?

So your argument is that "cost of physically performing" really means the same thing as "cost of performing", and that the FSF included the word "physically" for no reason? Somehow I'm not terribly convinced.

Labor costs would generally be reasonable, but the license apparently bars rolling those in. If you don't like that, take it up with the FSF.

He was already in violation; he did not include either the source code or a written offer to provide source code with his binary version. If the binary version was accompanied by the source code, that would have ended his obligations; if it was accompanied by a written offer to provide source code, that would allow anyone to ask for the source code.

You obviously either never read the GPL or misunderstood it. It does not require one to possess a binary copy as a prerequisite for anything.

Here, let me exchange the White House for you.

Do you see the difference between providing the medium and providing a link to it?

There are at least three problems with your interpretation. First, the binary form of the software appears to not include any offer to provide source code, so the $3.99 cost for a binary copy is not easily interpreted as the cost to provide a copy of the source code. Second, the language of the GPL specifically limits the cost to the "cost of physically performing source distribution"; the inclusion of the qualifier "physically" arguably excludes imputed labor costs. Third, to the extent that the language is ambiguous, US courts are supposed to interpret ambiguous clauses in standard form contracts against the party offering the contract, and there is room to view the distributor either as the party who accepted the GPL or the party who offered it (to the end user).

I sent a support request to the distributor asking where the source code is. Depending on the response to that, I might complain to Google and/or the DosBox developers. I would rather have the distributor mend his ways with as little third-party pressure as possible; I think that usually leads to a better FOSS environment in the long term.

I paid $3.99 for a copy, but that still does not give me any legal rights under the GPL; the GPL is between a distributor (the DOSBox Turbo guy) and the authors (contributors to DosBox) of a piece of software. The issue is that the distributor has not satisfied the terms of the license that allows him to create and distribute his derived work -- those do not allow him to sell binary copies and then only give source to people who paid for the binary.

As a point of fact, the GPL does not "specifically allow[]" you to make the source code available only to users who pay for a binary version. GPLv2 offers three choices when distributing a binary work covered by its terms: 3(a) accompany the binary version with the source code; 3(b) accompany the binary version with an offer to provide the source code to anyone, at no more than your cost to distribute the source; or 3(c) -- for non-commercial redistribution of binary forms -- with the same offer that one received according to 3(b).

What is "actual instantaneous amortized cost" supposed to mean? $3.99 is certainly not his marginal cost -- and I am confident it's more than his overall amortized cost for the resources involved -- and requiring someone to pay for a binary version before you fulfill their request for source code is certainly not compliant with the wording of the GPL.

Okay, I spent the $3.99. As far as I can tell, the binary install does not include source code; the only related file I can find is an 8.5 MB binary blob, apparently encrypted (it's in an ".android_secure" directory and "strings" doesn't show any apparent English text). When the application runs, it does not appear to provide any link to the corresponding source code, or any contact information to request the source code. The only way I found to contact the distributor is to go through Google Play. So: Do you still think this turkey complies with the GPL?

So, I did pay the $3.99 for DOSBox Turbo, installed it on my phone, and moved it to the SD card. When mounting that as a disk drive, the only thing I can see related to "dosbox" is .../.android_secure/com.fishstix.dosbox-1.asec, an 8.5 MB binary file that is apparently encrypted. When I run the application itself, it does not include anything that looks like a link or other offer to the corresponding source code. My conclusion: This is a clear and blatant violation of both the letter and the spirit of the GPL. Now will you admit that you're wrong?