GPL License with clause for Web use?

[Alex Hudson]

On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 13:11 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com> writes:
> > This sounds a really trolly question, so I apologise in advance :) How
> > do you square freedom zero with your previous statement about
> > restricting public use to those people willing to distribute source?
> 
> *You* can use AGPL'd code for any purpose, but making it available for
> others to use is not *you* using it for a purpose, so it's not a freedom
> zero issue.
> 
> The practice of "making it available for others to use" is more similar to
> "giving copies to others", which the GPL has always attached requirements
> to.

I guess this definition of "user" is actually the nub of it.

As a specific example, let's say I have a web content management system
which is licensed under the AGPL. 

I would be relatively happy to say that people managing websites using
that CMS would be "users": for example, if a business takes the CMS,
makes interesting modifications and sells access to that software, I can
see the reasoning for making source available to those people who've
bought access.

However, I don't see that visitors to the websites being managed by the
CMS are "users" - they're viewing the output of the CMS for sure, and
interacting with it in a limited way, but not much more than that.
Providing a potentially multi-megabyte download to any of those users
could be a real pain: e.g., OpenCMS (it's not AGPL, but..) is almost
40Mb to download.

AGPL covers both situations. It comes down to this: if I put PDFs on my
website, people aren't entitled to my OpenOffice.org. But people
accessing my HTML are entitled to my AGPL'd CMS. The "user" is the same
in both IMHO.

Cheers,

Alex.