I was planning on creating a few demo applications of the TouchKit addon and publishing them on my website so I can access them from anywhere and share them with my friends. Since they’re just demo applications, I’d like to take advantage of the AGPL license.
I’ve never used software that I needed to make available to the public before, so I was wondering if I could get some advice on how to do this. I think a small example of someone else doing the same thing as what I’m trying to do would be sufficient…but I haven’t been able to find that yet. A step by step guide would be ideal, though…
Should I be putting “copyright” notices in my code (i.e. copyright John Doe)? In the header section of every Java file? Less or more places than that?
Does it matter how I make the source code available? For example, can I just zip up my Eclipse project structure and put a link to it on my website?
Do I have to include a copy of the AGPL?
Maybe there’s a better place that explains what I’m after or provides some examples…but I thought I’d start asking here since it’s the TouchKit addon that I’ll be using.
Do you intend to modify the source code of the Touchkit library/addon itself? If yes, then you need to think of re-distributing the modifications.
But if you only intend to use Touchkit in demos, or in commercial applications, without modifying the source code of the Touchkit addon, then you don’t need to worry.
e.g. Look at the clear language used at this MongoDB blog post:
http://blog.mongodb.org/post/103832439/the-agpl :
"To say this another way: if you modify the core database source code, the goal is that you have to contribute those modifications back to the community.
Note however that it is
NOT required that applications using mongo be published . The copyleft applies only to the mongod and mongos database programs. This is why Mongo DB drivers are all licensed under an Apache license. You application, even though it talks to the database, is a separate program and “work”."
It is up to you. In case of demos I would just add copyrights to readme.txt or some other place where people can see who owns the copyright.
This is ok. There are no requirement for proper build scripts or anything like that.
Not necessary if you are not including touchkit itself. If you are including touchkit jar, please state in readme.txt that it is under AGPL and link to touchkit page in directory.
This actually not true. The difference betweed TouchKit and MongoDB is that MongoDB is a separate server, while as ToucKit is part of your application. This means that if you are using AGPL version of TouchKit, you must comply to AGPL license (publish your application with a open source license). If you do not want to publish your application source code, then you should be using commercial version (CVAL) of TouchKit instead.