IANAL and my understanding of the GPL in a web context is at best fuzzy, but I still believe the following to be true: The majority of application code is run

IANAL and my understanding of the GPL in a web context is at best fuzzy, but I still believe the following to be true: The majority of application code is run on a user's browser. This means it is distributed (or conveyed) to the user. Thus, you have to offer every user of the app a possibility to obtain the unobfuscated source code. But there is more: The GPL requires you to offer not only some JS files, but everything needed to run the application. This would include everything on the server-side as well. Sencha's take on this might also be interesting in this context: http://www.sencha.com/legal/open-source-faq/ http://www.sencha.com/legal/open-source-faq/ They have been using a GPL dual-licensing model for their products for quite some time now and I suspect they consulted more than one lawyer.