Re: Do web applications disable GPL obligations?
On Tue Mar 11 16:14, Mark Tyler wrote:
> A friend and I have developed a web application for an online shop
> with some pretty advanced features that were requested by our
> customers. We included GPL sources into the application and for that
> reason distributed the application according to the same license
> (GPLv3).
> When we asked him to comply with the GPL he only replied that web
> applications are not affected, because the application is only used,
> but not distributed. It is true, that the application is installed on
> the server side, but parts of it, namely java classes, are distributed
> to the clients (=the shop visitors) in binary form.
As he says, if they are not distributing the binaries they are not
obliged to distribute or publish the source code (GPL section 2, and
the definition of propogate in section 0). Indeed, licences which _do_
mandate such are regularly labelled as non-free here (see the desert
island test).
However, as you say, some code _is_ distributed, namely the Java
classes. Thus, the vender must comply with GPL section 6 for at least
those parts which are distributed.
Matt
--
Matthew Johnson
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