Friday, September 28, 2007

Understanding GPL - Vote on the two scenerios

I'm sure by now everyone's familiar with the first U.S. GPL lawsuit filed against Monsoon Multimedia by BusyBox and Free Software Foundation.
(If you're not familiar, check out the following links: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5684746851.html)

Well reading through those made me question the license and how it applies to two different scenarios.

Scenario - A: Say you create a publically accessible website called Fritz.com and this website on the server-side uses a library called abc.jar that's released under the GPL license.

Does that constitute that we release the source code of Fritz.com website to comply with the GPL licensing?

Scenario - B: Say we create a Java framework, called Fritz (Fritz.jar). This is the next upcoming big MVC framework like Struts or WebWork but proprietary. This framework uses a library called abc.jar that's released under the GPL license. And the person or company that developed it wants to sell it. And people can buy it and use it in their development work.

Now since Fritz.jar depends on or uses abc.jar, does that constitute that we release the source code of Fritz.jar to comply with the GPL licensing?

Share your thoughts. Which one of these two cases do we need to release the "fritz" software? Is there a violation in this case? And when you reply, explain why instead of just voting...

Current Votes:

Scenario - A - Yes, release your code as well............................1
Scenario - A - No, you do not need to release your code.........2

Scenario - B - Yes, release your code as well.............................3
Scenario - B - No, you do not need to release your code..........0