With the greatest of respect, you've forgotten what the licenses say.
GPLv2: [0]
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
...
6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways:
a) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by the Corresponding Source fixed on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange.
b) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a written offer [to convey the source code upon request]... on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.
...
d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. ...
e) Convey the object code using peer-to-peer transmission, provided you inform other peers where the object code and Corresponding Source of the work are being offered to the general public at no charge under subsection 6d.
[0] <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html>
[1] <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html>
[2] To downvoters: Don't forget that OCR was decent even back in the 1990s... certainly good enough for a good-quality printout in a fixed-width font to be -strictly speaking- machine-readable, and it has only gotten better as time has wobbled on. If you don't believe my account of the history, go look up how Zimmerman exported copies of PGP back when it was considered an export-controlled munition.
I stand by the position that all this doesn't seem very restrictive though. I don't think the GPL could have been without a risk of making some legitimate cases litigious or something.
It's completely wrong.
> I stand by the position that all this doesn't seem very restrictive though.
Is your position that it's less restrictive than it needs to be?
If that's not your position, then I'm not at all sure why you're bringing this up. If that is your position, then I disagree with you. The entire point of the GPL is to require distributors to "share and share alike". It's not a "sue everyone into oblivion" license, it's a "don't be a fuckin asshole with this gift I gave you to use, inspect, and modify however you wish... pass it along to others under the same terms" license.
I think the GPL doesn't impose much on how one should be redistributing the source code.
I'm not sure I would like it to me more restrictive, and I completely agree with your reading (starting from "The entire point of the GPL...").
> If that's not your position, then I'm not at all sure why you're bringing this up.
My initial reply to you was me mostly agreeing with you: distributing via Google Drive is probably not a violation of the letter of the GPL. Making it a pain to get the source code is an obvious violation of its spirit though (your "don't be a fuckin asshole" point).
>> my phrasing ... is somewhat wrong
> It's completely wrong.
Well, what concrete restriction you see in the GPL about how to redistribute the source code, apart from "you must make it available in a reasonable way (and tell people they can get it, the GPLv3 is more explicit about this but Android doesn't have GPLv3 code AFAIK)?"
Basically, if you think courts are going to be OK with interpreting "download from this FTP site" as acceptable but "download the same tarball from Drive" as unacceptable, you're fooling yourself.
Drive is fine, given the spirit of the license. It's merely inconvenient.
I hope you're not including me in "people". Remember that I said:
There might be some merit to a claim that Google Drive isn't a medium customarily used for software distribution these days, but ... I'm skeptical that it's a violation of the letter of the GPL.