Re: tunefl and other web services

[David Kastrup]

Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, Jul 05, 2012 at 10:11:09AM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Graham Percival
>> <address@hidden> wrote:
>> > Commercial services are ok, but non-Free software is not.  The GNU
>> > coding standards are quite clear on this:
>> >
>> > "A GNU program should not recommend, promote, or grant legitimacy
>> > to the use of any non-free program. Proprietary software is a
>> > social and ethical problem, and our aim is to put an end to that
>> > problem."
>> > http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/References.html
>> 
>> neither scorio nor tunefl are considered non-free programs, so they
>> should be OK. FSF's beef is with restrictive licensing, since
>> licensing means you cannot freely copy the software ("share with your
>> neighbors").
>
> I must be blind, because I can't find any source code on the
> scorio website.  I _do_ see apps for the ipad, and I know that due
> to Apple's licensing terms, those aren't compatible with the GPL.
> Of course, since scorio presumably owns their own source code,
> they could be dual-licensing it.
>
> I also can't find source on the tunefl website.  Their "legal"
> page says that they allow third-party companies to track you on
> their webiste, and that users shouldn't submit copywritten
> material and that the users licenses tunefl.com to use that
> material.
>
> I'm not seeing how I can freely copy either of their software.
> Granted, this probably gets into the realm of "software as a
> service", but given that the GPLv3 specifically losed some
> loopholes about that, I doubt that GNU would consider non-source
> "software as a service" to be Free software.  I can check, if you
> want.

The GPLv3 does not address the availability of software used as a
service: you need to use the Affero GPL for that.

<URL:http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Freedom-for-Web-Pages.html#Freedom-for-Web-Pages>
states for hosting GNU software:

    If you use a site other than www.gnu.org, please make sure that the
    site runs on free software alone. (It is ok if the site uses
    unreleased custom software, since that is free in a trivial sense:
    there’s only one user and it has the four freedoms.) If the web site
    for a GNU package runs on non-free software, the public will see
    this, and it will have the effect of granting legitimacy to the
    non-free program.

If it is ok to host GNU software on a server running unreleased custom
software, it is hard to state that this should not be allowed for
third-party servers.

Even if the software running those servers _does_ use LilyPond
internally as part of providing the service, the straightforward GPL
does not require that those providers make the source of the LilyPond
version they use available themselves.

The situation changes immediately if the named sites actually also
license or sell the software their site is running on.

-- 
David Kastrup