Palm Pre is shipping GPL incompliant

Palm is only waiting two weeks, so it seems a little excessive to worry just yet (especially since finishing anything in 2 weeks seems incredibly efficient by some corporate standards). But it is okay to ask the question, and remind them in public of their obligations.

Keep in mind that the "preparation" they're doing could be as simple as scrubbing everything to make sure they don't accidentally release anything proprietary. For example, even for open-source packages, it's conceivable that they have developed some of their own internal tests that use proprietary data, and so their internal copy of the packages would contain more than they intend to release to the public.

... No, not so much. They are abiding by at least the letter of the GPL, as long as they do send the code at some point. The GPL doesn't specify that they have to ship you the source code immediately, just that they have to ship you the source code.

"This sounds suspiciously like "we didn't think about it early enough and now we need to reproduce the soruce code that was used for actually compiling the build that is installed on the devices"."

You have no idea how much time and effort goes into tracking these licenses and associated code.

"For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights."

straight from GPLv3. So Palm doesn't exactly follow the license does it?