Re: tunefl and other web services

[David Kastrup]

Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, Jul 05, 2012 at 03:57:00PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> >> > "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
>> >
>> > 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.
>> 
>> 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:
>
> Hmm.  I think that the GNU coding style guide (above) is more
> relevant here, but you have a good point.

[...]

> You have a stronger point about tunefl.  But I still think the
> coding standards are still firmly against it.

You quote: "the use of any non-free program".  The freedom-for-web-pages
site states: "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."

So a service using unreleased software quite explicitly is not
considered use of non-free software by the GNU maintainer guidelines.

Now that just means that the choice to include links to tunefl or not (I
have not actually checked it) seems to be left open by the GNU
maintainer guidelines.  It does not mean that you can't make a choice of
your own.

-- 
David Kastrup