GPL and server appliances

[Jerome Alet]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 03:52:20PM +0100, Samuel Liddicott wrote:
> >
> I suppose the original question was not clear:
> 
> On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 22:22, Jerome Alet wrote:
>  
> >say some company (A) enhances your software, install the new 
> >combined product on a server appliance, and put the server appliance 
> >at a third party company (B, its client), but DOESN'T SELL the 
> >server appliance to B. Instead of selling it, A is still the full 
> >owner of server appliance, which is installed at B's location only 
> >as part of a support contract.     
> >
> I read this as B is co-locating the server on behalf of A, B taking the 
> role of ISP.

you read this incorrectly then, but english is not my native
language, sorry

> I agree, if B is the customer and actually using the service provided by 
> A that this counts as a distribution.

That's what I wanted to be sure of.

In my case B really is the final customer. B doesn't rent the 
server appliance per se, B has bought a support contract from
A for the "enhanced" GPLed software. As part of the contract,
A puts the server's at B's location, and B uses the software
on A's server.

> If A does co-locate the service at B's facilites with a support contract 
> from B but B is NOT using the services from A, but A has some 
> independant customers C, who use the service on the computer hosted at 
> B; does this count as distribution?

This is not what I asked, but this is interesting too :-)

bye, and thanks again to all

Jerome Alet