Cronometer (GPL) goes web based, loses GPL ?

[James Wilkinson]

linux guy wrote:
> Has the cronometer provided broken the rules of the GPL by enhancing
> it and turning it into a web application and not providing the course
> code back to the user base ?
> 
> If so, where and how should this be reported ?

The generally accepted answer (including by the FSF) is no: if they’re
just providing their enhanced version as a web application on their own
servers, they aren’t exactly distributing the program, so the source
code doesn’t need to be made available.

The Affero GPL is a variant of the GPL which explicitly requires that
the source code to the web application *is* made available to its users.

See also http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html (note that this
talks about version 3 of both the GNU GPL and the Affero GPL, but there
is also a version 2 of the Affero GPL which is a modified version of the
GNU GPL version 2).

Hope this helps,

James.

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