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Comment by its_so_on | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget that web services are a great way around the gpl. Just slap a subscription fee on there and don't distribute the server-side code and you can do whatever you want with it and/or charge whatever you want for it without being in violation or giving a competitor a chance to copy you. worked for Google.

gpl client-side code of course you cannot protect in this way (except your trademarks).

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But this is JavaScript to be run on top of WebRTC, which is a client-side API. So won't your code by definition be client-side if you use this?

But then again isn't all client-side JavaScript open source?

No, you can see the source, but thats not the same as "open source".

this is an important distinction. Everything on the web is copyrighted and you can't just go and grab images/html/css/javascript without permission from the copyright holder.

And view source isn't going to show you much when looking at sites like Gmail where the code is generated by a compiler that makes it as obtuse and unreadable as machinely possible.

Exactly. Think of it like a book. You can see the source code of a book (i.e. the individual letters), but you cannot copy it (without permission)

GPL requires that users have access to the preferred form for modifying the work. If you're using coffeescript or a state machine graph or whatever, the generated javascript is more like object code than maintainable source.

GPLv3 (the license used here) applies for web services as well AFAIK and imposes the same requirements for distribution.

There was a draft of GPLv3 that included such a clause. This was dropped with the development of Affero GPL license. The final version of GPLv3 dropped all language regarding web services. If you want to use a GPL-like license for a web application, then the AGPL is the license to use.

Interesting. I was not aware that this was contained in the draft and then removed. Tnx for clarification.

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