[Owncloud] Distro packages and AGPL3 compliance

[Lars Meyser]

----- Ursprüngliche Message -----

> Von: Erwin Rennert <rennert at zsi.at>
> An: owncloud at kde.org
> CC: 
> Gesendet: 13:06 Freitag, 5.Juli 2013
> Betreff: Re: [Owncloud] Distro packages and AGPL3 compliance
> 
> You should be aware that Debain - as do Fedora and Suse - provide source 
> packages for the binary packages they offer. So, the distributions 
> already fulfill the requrements of the AGPL.

Yes, they fulfill their obligations for distributing packages.

> You should also be aware that you would need to provide the sources only 
> if you were to *distribute binary packages* of owncloud. This, however, 
> I believe is not your intention. You merely want to offer the use of the 
> software; not the software itself.

This is the case for the GPL, the AGPLv3 has this additional provision for remote network interaction:


----

13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the
Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users
interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version
supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding
Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source
from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary
means of facilitating copying of software. [...]

----

So if I offer a modified version of owncloud to other users over the network I am obliged to make the source available online in a "prominent" way.


> BTW, you can legally send e-mails without having to provide the source 
> code of GPLed software such as Postfix, Exim or G-d forbid, sendmail. :-)

That is simply because Postfix, Exim, and sendmail are available under the IBM public license, GPLv3, and the sendmail license respectively which do not have such provisions.