My understanding of the GPL is that a link to the source on a site
controlled by a different project is not sufficient - since that project
may change the source so that it is no longer possible to reproduce the
distributed binary from the referenced source.

My understanding may of course be incorrect, but if not the issue is
likely to be a concern for both WinARM and ARM-GCC.

The part of the GPL that requires that binary distributors take control
of the source they use is section 3. The last paragraph of this section
being key in this case - the source must be available from "the same
place" and the binary. Of course what the definition of a 'place' on the
Internet is is arguable, it could be all one place, or a place might be
a server, a domain, a volume or even a single folder.

I do not mean to open a can of worms on this, but would be interested in
considered opinions. Since we all benefit from the work of the GNU
project as well as the efforts of Martin Thomas, Andreas Schwarz, Pablo
Kocik, and others we should all be concerned with license compliance.

Hello Clifford,

what I understand with same place, here are a small example:

I have create a new ARM toolchain for windows, you can find the
toolchain
here: http://www.yagarto.de/

At the same domain which is under my control, you can find the source
too.

If you want to link to an other place which is not under your control,
you need an "contract" from the other place that the source will not
moved.
I have read this some days before.

If someone will be a mirror, the mirror must be guarantee that the
source
will not be moved, or deleted.

In my case, I could not linked to the ftp.gnu.org, where I have the
source
from, because it is not under my control, and I have no "contract" with
this
side.

This is what I understand about "same place". But it is possible that I
understand it wrong, I am not a native english speaker/reader.

Best regards,

Michael