As far as I know, it's always been that if you distribute something with GPL code, you must make the source available to anyone that requests it. Not only to your customers. One can change though, for the costs of making it available.
The thing you mentioned is applied to licensing. A person is only under obligations by the license if he/she distributes anything that uses GPL code. If people only run a piece of GPLed software, or if they make changes only for personal use, they're not under GPL license obligations.