4 ms·
The lines between "distribute the source (or a product written in it)" and "what you privately do on your servers" is (I think) hard to discern for a lot of G
by dalbasal 9y ago
The lines between "distribute the source (or a product written in it)" and "what you privately do on your servers" is (I think) hard to discern for a lot of Google's code.
If I have open source code that estimates your shoes size based on your IP address, and I make a website that will output your result... which category of code is this? What if I use this code to customize the UI for a shoe store?
Honest question, is there an established way of deciding whether something counts as "distributed"? Is it simply a question of what machine it runs on?
- Dayshine 9y agoAGPL literally exists for that distinction. AGPL roughly says that a website a user interacts with counts as distribution (in addition to what GPL would count as distribution)
- dalbasal 9y agoSo in plain GPL, it isn't or it's ambiguous?
- lvh 9y agoHasn't been tested in court to my knowledge, but my understanding is that leading IP lawyers who otherwise disagree on a bunch of things about the GPL (Eben Moglen, Lawrence Rosen) agree that e.g a modified GPLd publicly accessible web server doesn't count as distribution.