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LICENSE_CLARIFICATION.md

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License Clarification

Verse is licensed to you under the terms of the Gnu General Public License (GPL), Version 3. See the LICENSE.md file in this repository for more information.

Verse is an unusual piece of software, and even the GPL could not have anticipated how weird it is. Some clarification of the terms of the GPL is therefore in order.

TL;DR

Code that you write using Verse is yours, and you can do whatever you want with it. You are always permitted to do the following things:

  • Make apps using Verse and share them with other people
  • Make apps using Verse and sell them to other people
  • Write code using Verse and then use it for some other purpose that doesn't involve Verse.

The code for Verse itself is what is licensed under the GPL. You are permitted to:

  • Modify the Verse code in any way you like for personal use.
  • Share or sell a modified version of Verse, as long as you make the source code for it available under a GPL-compatible license.
  • Make apps using a modified version of Verse and share/sell them, as long as you make the source code for your modified version of Verse available under a GPL-compatible license.

If you make the change history of your version of Verse publicly viewable (for instance, on GitHub or GitLab), that shall be considered sufficient to comply with the following language in the GPL:

a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.

Background

When you export a Verse application, Verse makes a copy of its own code, pastes your application code inside, and downloads the whole thing as an HTML file. This means that if someone who is not familiar with how Verse works receives a copy of a Verse app, they might not be able to tell where Verse's code ends and your application code begins. This is potentially problematic, because the GPL places the following conditions on the redistribution of licensed code:

  1. Provision of License and Source Code. Anyone who comes into possession of GPL-licensed software must be able to get the source code too. They must also be able to get the license, so they know what their rights and responsibilities are.
  2. Attribution. You must give credit to the original author of the code.
  3. Description of Changes. If you have made changes to the code, they must be explicitly marked as such.
  4. Share-alike. All code that you add to a GPL-licensed piece of software must also be freely shared under a "GPL-compatible" license. The effect of this is that GPL code, even if modified, cannot be turned into a proprietary, closed-source product.

Verse takes care of the first two requirements for you by linking to the Verse website. The last two items are the potentially problematic ones.

The important thing to note is that a Verse HTML file contains two independently copyrighted works:

  • The code for Verse itself, which is copyright © Ben Christel and subject to the terms of the GPL.
  • Your application code, for which you own the copyright.

The distinction between these two works is maintained by means of an HTML tag that looks like this:

<script id="user-code" type="text/x-verse">
  ...
</script>

Everything within that HTML tag is your code.