[License-discuss] Is Web application including GPL libraries covered under GPL?

[MURAKAMI, Keiko]

Thank you all,

Our application are made by Java, 
so these are not tightly linked GPL libraries,
because GPL libraries are located in another directory,
are referred or dynamic liked at live time.
And we never deliver the application to users, 
we run the web application on our side servers,
all users just use our web service.

I understood that license of our application covered under GPL,
but we need not give every source code to users.

Keiko

-----Original Message-----
From: license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org
[mailto:license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org] On Behalf Of Kuno Woudt
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2013 10:04 PM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Is Web application including GPL libraries
covered under GPL?

On 12-05-13 08:08, MURAKAMI, Keiko wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> We've been developing an application on Eclipse Framework with 
> libararies covered under LGPL, GPL and Apache licenses.
> These libraries are jxl.jar(LGPL), servlet-api.jar(GPL v2) and
> stepcounter(Apache) and so on.
> When we deliver our application just as Web application, by using but 
> not distributing the libraries, should we distribute it under GPL?
> Should we be ready to show the complete source code to any user?
> The application is not static linked.

Depending on who you ask, linking to servlet-api.jar means you need to
license your web application under the GPL.  If you run this web application
on your own servers and users connect to it, you would not be obligated to
give those users the source code, because you are not distributing the web
application to them -- you are merely providing a service.

If your application makes use of non-trivial chunks of javascript, then be
aware that you are distributing that code to your users.  If that javascript
is tightly interwoven with the rest of your web application so as to form a
single creative work, I would argue that you ARE distributing parts of your
web application to your users and should therefore comply with the
conditions of the GPL -- and make the full source code available to those
users.

I am not a lawyer.  I am also not aware of any cases which would provide
some guidance on when client-side and server-side code are sufficiently
entangled to be considered a single creative work.

-- warp.
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