Re:Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3
by josephcsible on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @11:16PM
(#26885049)
The source for compiled JavaScript or WASM needs to be provided even with just the GPL rather than the AGPL. The loophole in the GPL only applies if the code is actually running on someone else's server and not the user's client.
Re:Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3
by throwaway2037 on Friday April 23, 2021 @02:20AM
(#26911520)
Great point. To travel deeper down this rabbit hole: We might need something like "Citrix Remote Desktop" in a browser. Basically: Only sent graphical diffs over the wire. Then, browser is only painting pixels, not running the app. Everything else is computed remotely. Horrible scenario, but sadly might pass muster vis-a-vis A/GPL!
Further: If we think about cloud-based AGPL apps: For the most part we are talking about web-apps, which, in most cases, will always include JavaScript running on the user's host. Does FSF or AGPL have anything to say about this source? I ask because I am thinking deeper about your idea: What if the not-so-LibreOffice was nothing more than compiled into WASM (WebAssembly) and run in your browser... so the "server" (SaaS) was doing nothing except serving a huge binary that you run locally in your JavaScript VM. Plus, the compile from C/C++ into WASM could reasonably obfuscate the original source. I do imagine a future where lots of commercial apps are nothing more than C/C++ compiled into WASM then run through a browser. This would provide some source code privacy (that vanilla JavaScript cannot provide today) and reduce the burden of installation issues.