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Google ?Google ?Posted May 24, 2007 8:11 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524)In reply to: Google ? by anselm Parent article: A day at the Open Source Business Conference It didn't change. But the *spirit* of the GPL is that every single user of a piece of software should have the freedom to improve, change, redistribute, adjust that piece of software, if he/she so chooses. This breaks down with web-services. If you took a GPL-program and adopted it so that it could run as a web-service, you could then (currently) sell access to this web-service per-seat, and the users would be unable to improve, change, redistribute or adjust the program they are using. Which is contrary to the spirit of the GPL, but perfectly legal according to the *letter* of GPLv2. In effect, if you use GPL-software only for a web-service, you're allowed to treat it like BSD.
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Google ? Posted May 24, 2007 9:17 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Let's stipulate for a moment that you are right about the »spirit« of the GPL, as applied to web services. The question here is how far down the stack this should extend. Presumably Google are running their own proprietary search engine code, on which the »spirit of the GPL« has no bearing, on top of a possibly-patched Linux kernel. Should they be morally obligated to publish their Linux kernel patches just because the machine in question is running (or even merely talking to another machine running) a web server that is accessible by the public?
Google ? Posted May 24, 2007 22:57 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] No, something changed.The GPL didn't change, and legal requirements didn't change, but the thing that Stallman sought to regulate with GPL has changed. Much of the computer use that formerly happened via distribution of software now happens by offering a service on the Internet. For example, this year I filed my income tax using a web service, whereas in the past I would pick up a CD at a store. And it looks like that trend will continue. Essentially, we're moving from the Microsoft era to the Google era. So to continue the freedoms GPL hoped to give to computer users, there needs to be something new.
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