RE: Where Do I Stand?

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http://forums.oscommerce.com/viewtopic.php?p=177439#177439
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This is an interesting question and I'm going to answer with two big proviso's. First the obvious one is that I'm not a Lawyer.Second this is purely a personal opinion and nothing to do with my position as a team member.

If you look at the GPL license then you will find reference to a 'distribution' occuring.

So, if you have  control of a domain and install osCommerce, you then modify the sources to provide extra functionality. No distribution has occured and you are therefore not required to release the source.

In other words on my own domain I could build the biggest kick ass site I want, as long as the code remains on that site no distribution has occured.

Working out when a distribution has occured however can be fraught with mis-understanding. For example, if it was my own site, but some third party had ftp rights then if they downloaded the code then 'distribution' would have happened and the person doing the download could claim GPL rights to redistribute the source.

Similarly, if you built this site for just this one customer, but you were totally in control of the domain on which the code resides, then decide to move the code to another domain for use by another Client and that domain was not totally under your control, then again a distribution would occur.

If that doesn't make sense, my apologies. and of course remeber what I said about this being my personal take on GPL