On 10/06/2015 12:33, Gareth Edwards wrote: > The big thing everyone wants to know (and no-one seems to be able to > answer), is are the apps made with Rapid also Open Source, i.e. are > app creators obliged to share the code and files for apps they've made > using Rapid with the rest of the Rapid community?
Hello, This post might seem a bit long - I'm just throwing a few ideas up into the air here with the usual disclaimers and hoping others will comment and correct me where I'm wrong. I had a quick look at Rapid - sounds interesting and something that I would certainly find useful for, ahem, /rapid/ development and prototyping and for building admin interfaces for backends :) To answer your question in brief - not typically. There would be two ways of looking at the question of whether the "apps made wth Rapid [are] also Open Source": 1. the licensing terms of Rapid require app developers to release any applications created with it under a specified licence (e.g. GPLv3); or 2. apps built on Rapid are derivative works of Rapid itself and therefore remain within the GPLv3 Regarding point one, the GPLv3 doesn't allow for this. If it did, for example, documents made with LibreOffice would themselves be licensed under the GPLv3. Technically I think it would be possible for such a licence to still be compatible with the Open Source Definition, although I can't name a licence like that off the top of my head. With respect to point two, you'd need to show that the apps built using Rapid are actually derived works. From the viewpoint of the Free Software Foundation, they would probably see that as the apps are completely dependent on Rapid, perhaps moreso than a software library, the apps would therefore form "derivative works" and be licensed under the GPL. I don't know how successful that argument would be in court, and especially here as the apps are not seen as modifications or improvements to Rapid but instead apps in their own right which are merely interpreted by/linked to Rapid. Another thing to note is that the GPL only really takes effect on distribution or propagation of software. Therefore, even if apps were somehow required to be licensed under the GPLv3 or were otherwise considered derivative works, app creators wouldn't actually be obliged to share the code and files with others where they were merely developing the apps for their own use. It's only where the developer wants to give (or make available) the app to other people/entities where that developer would be required to release the source code for that app. TL;DR - if you really want to make sure that the apps created with Rapid are themselves open source then you'd probably want some form of custom OSD-compatible software licence. Regards, Max
_______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
