[Autonomo.us] AGPL licensing questions
Hi everyone, I am not sure if this is the right place to pose these questions, but I know there are probably many subscribed who have been doing similar things, so there might be some experience here. If not, I would be grateful if you could point me to any better place to ask this. Thanks. I am currently writing a web application that I would love to release under the AGPLV3. Applying FSF licenses to web applications always gives me a terrible headache. In my current situation the main problem is the combination of so many elements licensed under different terms. This is what I am putting together: 1. My app is based on Ruby on Rails (MIT License), Rails Plugins (mostly MIT), KDE Icons (LGPL) and the jquery Javascript Library (MIT or GPL dual licensed). This is uncritical as I understand, since even if I create a combined work (which I am never sure of with web stuff) MIT is GPL-compatible. 2. I use an image from flickr under Creative Commons Attribution license. Is this critical? I have no problem with giving attribution, but I wonder if using this in my app somehow makes this a combined work or something. 3. I based the web design (html, css and some images) on a free template under Creative Commons Attribution license. This is where it gets messy. Again I have no problem with giving attribution, but the original template code is now splattered all over my application, since I use small parts of it in many of my Rails-templates. It is so intertwined with my code now, that it can hardly be seen as seperate. I thought about licensing the Rails-template files differently than the rest of the application, but that is overly complicated and at the end of the day does not make much sense, since the whole of the backend code, the templates, the javacript etc. is the application. No part can stand for itself. So how do I go about doing this correctly? Is AGPL'ing this application possible at all? Bonus question 1: With so many components licensed differently, where would be a good place to mention all this and give credit to all the original authors/creators? A COPYING file? Maybe as a preamble to the LICENSE file? Or put it somewhere in the README? Bonus question 2: Is there a comprehensive how-to or faq of how to apply FSF licenses to web applications? I am serious. This is making me physically ill. Even though the wording in the V3 (A)GPL texts has changed, I cannot help but think it was written with C code in mind. Meanwhile this has strange effects in the web world. Like people (re-) licensing their free javascript libraries under GPL in order to coerce their users into buying commercial licenses. Anyway, thanks in advance for any help you can give me. Kind regards, David ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.autonomo.us http://lists.autonomo.us/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Autonomo.us] AGPL licensing questions
On Fri, 2009-11-27 at 14:08 +0100, David Roetzel wrote: 3. I based the web design (html, css and some images) on a free template under Creative Commons Attribution license. This is where it gets messy. Again I have no problem with giving attribution, but the original template code is now splattered all over my application, since I use small parts of it in many of my Rails-templates. It is so intertwined with my code now, that it can hardly be seen as seperate. This *is* messy. The right thing to do here (both technically and to reduce your licensing headaches) is to make your app themeable, and use the template to create the default theme, making the theme a legitimately separate work from the app that is a derivative of the CC-BY licensed template. If you maintain this default theme in a separate source tree, and make sure your app works even without a theme (it is probably OK if the un-themed app is horribly ugly, as long as it still works as intended), you should be OK to bundle the theme into your distribution of the app. IANAL, TINLA, etc. I realize that 'make your app themeable' is a non-trivial project, but it has the added advantage of being a major selling point for many app categories (especially if it allows your users to easily preserve their look and feel modifications while upgrading the app to a newer release). - Michael R. Bernstein signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.autonomo.us http://lists.autonomo.us/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [Autonomo.us] AGPL licensing questions
Michael R. Bernstein wrote: On Fri, 2009-11-27 at 14:08 +0100, David Roetzel wrote: 3. I based the web design (html, css and some images) on a free template under Creative Commons Attribution license. This is where it gets messy. Again I have no problem with giving attribution, but the original template code is now splattered all over my application, since I use small parts of it in many of my Rails-templates. It is so intertwined with my code now, that it can hardly be seen as seperate. This *is* messy. The right thing to do here (both technically and to reduce your licensing headaches) is to make your app themeable, and use the template to create the default theme, making the theme a legitimately separate work from the app that is a derivative of the CC-BY licensed template. I'm new around here, so take this with a grain of salt... but maybe this opinion would be relevant: http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/ As I understand it, the Software Freedom Law Centre concluded that, in the context of WordPress, the PHP files in a theme are subject to the requirements of the GPL, while images and CSS were not and could be separately licensed. But that seems very specific to an analysis of the WP source code. *shrugs* -- http://alleyneinc.net/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.autonomo.us http://lists.autonomo.us/mailman/listinfo/discuss
