[osflash] Commercial use of OSFlash projects?

[Till Schneidereit]

Mark Winterhalder wrote:
>> Would there be any way around these issues, if any? Say, obtaining
>> permission from the author/paying a commercial use fee? If the source is not
>> modified, does the GPL in fact have any effect in this case?
> 
> IANAL, but as I understand it, the GPL is more about distribution than
> about doing changes. That is, you can change the code all you want as
> long as you don't distribute it (i.e., run it on the server, not on
> the client). If you distribute it (e.g., as part of a website or CD
> ROM project), then you will have to make he changes available.
> Even unchanged, there are limitations for distribution -- but better
> look for a credible website that knows it better and can explain it
> better than I ever could...

Actually, I'm not too sure this has ever been really made clear for Flashplayer based projects at all. Normally, with web based project you don't need to release any source above what the user gets in the form of html/ js code anyway because all of the real code just gets executed on the server. This is why google can use all of that gpl'd software without distributing their (quite extensive, from what I've heard) changes. Note that the new GPL V3 will be modified to adress this exact case.
With Flashplayer based project, the situation is different, because quite a lot of the code is executed to the user an run on their machine. AFAIKT, this definitely is a binary distribution and would require the distributor to make the source available as well.
So I think Mark is pretty on spot here, it would just be nice to have a website spelling out the exact terms of distribution of code/ binaries under a number of popular licenses as they pertain to Flash developers.

cheers,
till

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Till Schneidereit        Laufgraben 31
phone ++49 172 9474164   20146 Hamburg, germany
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