GPL and text

Posted Jul 2, 2010 4:26 UTC (Fri) by TRS-80 (guest, #1804)
Parent article: Two GCC stories

Speaking of GPL and text, what happens when you include GPL JavaScript code in a webpage? Must the rest of the page also be licensed under the GPL?

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GPL and text

Posted Jul 2, 2010 11:36 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

IANAL but my guess is it would depend. Suppose the Javascript just causes a snowflake to appear and drift down any arbitrary web page in which it is included. In this case the page with Javascript seems to be "mere aggregation"

OTOH suppose the Javascript is thoroughly wound into the structure of the page, constantly mentioning specific HTML elements by their ID from deep inside functions, making assumptions about the exact text inside a node and so on. In this case it seems as though the Javascript + HTML are a single work, and arguing that the JS is licensed as a separate work would be laughable.

But then in the latter case the author of the Javascript is probably the owner of the whole work, and nothing prevents creators from asserting license terms that are impossible to fulfil or even totally incoherent. In this case you should treat it as though you weren't offered a license at all.

GPL and text

Posted Jul 2, 2010 18:07 UTC (Fri) by southey (guest, #9466) [Link] (1 responses)

Speaking of GPL and text, what happens when you include GPL JavaScript code in a webpage?
Hopefully it works as intended.

Must the rest of the page also be licensed under the GPL?
If you are not distributing that code then the GPL terms do not apply so an answer is no. But the sore point is that some people consider serving/accessing a web page as redistribution (very gray area since both sides have valid arguments). So it may be a different story with the GNU Affero General Public License!

If you are distributing the web page including GPL code as say downloadable file or in some package then you must follow the GPL regarding bundling software packages together.

GPL and text

Posted Jul 3, 2010 0:57 UTC (Sat) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]

I'm not familiar with any controversy; if you send someone a webpage, whether by HTTP or email or printed out and mailed, you have to follow the licenses for the material that you're sending them. It's distribution. The Affero license is all about code that runs on the server and creates the webpage, not code that you send to the end user.

GPL and text

Posted Jul 9, 2010 0:30 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

One thing to bear in mind - iirc javascript is interpreted, no?

I'd need to re-read the GPL to be sure, but if you distribute AS SOURCE, which a java-script scriptlet is, most of the nasty stuff in the GPL doesn't apply.

So you MIGHT find that you can include large chunks of javascript in your web-page and it falls under "mere aggregation", not contaminating anything else.

But IANAL, YMMV etc etc.

TTFN
Wol

GPL and text

Posted Jul 9, 2010 5:22 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

True, as long as you don't minimize the javascript. :-/

GPL and text

Posted Jul 9, 2010 6:53 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

The GPL requires that source be distributed in its preferred form (i.e. the original source). So if you took some GPLed Javascript work, then ran it through an obfuscator before redistributing it in web-pages, then you'd be in breach of the licence.