What does GPL mean if the software isn't distributed?

Michael Ivey is wondering about licensing when you are Selling a service. He writes that " My reading of the GPL FAQ leads me to believe that under GPL 2 running a piece of modified software on a website for the public to interact with does not qualify as distribution." As we start to connect to software that isn't running on our machines that we don't link against, what are the rules that change? Ivey writes " This would seem to imply that selling a service using modified GPL software without distributing the original source, modified source, binaries, or anything else, is perfectly legal". Talk back to his posting in today's Forums.

Chris Adamson kicked off the forum with his welcome post "'Your software must be free, but mine cannot be.' [..] So, generally speaking, when can you use GPL or similarly-licensed software in a commercial product? Does it matter if you're selling a service rather than selling software? And is there usually a case for making your own stuff open-source?"

Tackline posts code that demonstrates his method for native looking GUIs "For instance, labels should be looked up from a resource file (or similar). Also there's giving the labels mnemonics (from resources) and setting their label-for property to associate the text field. Perhaps tooltips. Possibly other things specific to the application."

James Gosling invites you to head to NetBeans Software Day in today's Weblogs. Gosling will be speaking there and the conference presentations include "all the new stuff in NetBeans 4 and the tools for developing mobile applications. It's even better than free, it has a negative price... Sign up for NetBeans software day and you can get a $300 discount on a JavaOne pass."

In Simian, Malcolm Davis discusses software that examines the "copy and pasting [that] occurs with every development project. The problem is many times overlooked, or missed during code inspection. Simian helps stop some of this monkey business by searching through text files (like Java and C#) and identifying duplications."

Bug day is here once again. James Todd invites you to join the JXTA developers for JXTA "Jambalaya" 2.3rc Bug Day Tue Jun 8 (20040608) 10am PST - 7pm PST.

In Also in Java Today we feature an introductory article An interdisciplinary modeling approach for SOA projects explains the three major abstraction levels in SOA are Operations, Services, and Business Processes. The article argues why OOD isn't enough and says that SOAD must provide a structured way to conceptualize services and help people understand what is and what is not a good service, and it must facilitate end-to-end modeling and have comprehensive tool support. The article ends with an example of an Automotive work order.

The introductory article An interdisciplinary modeling approach for SOA projects explains the three major abstraction levels in SOA are Operations, Services, and Business Processes. The article argues why OOD isn't enough and says that SOAD must provide a structured way to conceptualize services and help people understand what is and what is not a good service, and it must facilitate end-to-end modeling and have comprehensive tool support. The article ends with an example of an Automotive work order.

In today's Projects and Communities , we announce our licensing discussion asks "What kinds of software can you use from third parties and what kinds of attached strings are you willing to accept? What kind of a license can or should you release under?'

The technical lead for J2SE 1.5's monitoring and managing APIs is one of the featured guests in an online chat Tuesday, June 8, at 11:00 A.M. PDT/6:00 P.M. GMT. This continues the chat from May 20.

In today's java.net News Headlines :

• JOnAS 4.1
• Sylvain Wallez: Cocoon PMC Chairman, ASF VP
• Proposed Final Draft 2: JSR 133 - Java Memory Model and Thread Specification Revision
• Adobe LiveCycle J2EE File Management
• Jalopy 1.2
• Microsoft Set to Appeal EU Ruling

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Current and upcoming Java Events :

• June 11-13 Research Triangle Software Symposium
• June 15 Debugging and Profiling Your Code Webinar
• June 21 6th Workshop on Learning Software Organizations
• June 23 NYJavaSIG: 1.5 Concurrency Utilities in Practice
• June 24 Accelerate Productivity with Sun Java Web Application Framework Mod Chat
• June 25-27 Western Canada Java Software Symposium
• June 27 Javapedia Workshop and Community Meeting
• June 28 - July 1 JavaOne 2004
• June 28 - July 2 WWDC 2004
• June 29 Java Communities in Action
• June 29 NetBeans Software Day at JavaOne

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