Question about including GPL script
I am migrating a client-side static website that was made by another company to our (proprietary) CMS.
They have a small slideshow on their website that is powered by a JavaScript library that is licensed under the GPL. The attached license notice is stated below:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and / or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Now I don't know much about the GPL and have not used GPL code on a website before. If I include this library on my website, what are my obligations? Should I require the code to be released on the CMS server side? Since the HTML output is freely available through the Page Source, is that enough to satisfy the GPL?
The code stays on our servers, so the code is not distributed, even to the client (client).
UPDATE: Based on mgb's comment and the fact that this is client-side JavaScript then GPL code is being distributed. What should I do to comply with the GPL?
Thank you for your advice.
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AFAIK, you should leave the GNU disclaimer in your javascript.
EDIT: There is actually an interesting paragraph at gnu.org saying that you need to just pay attention to this:
Copyright (C) YYYY Developer The JavaScript code in this page is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. The code is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU GPL for more details.
As an additional permission under section 7 of the GNU GPL version 3, you may distribute non-source (e.g. minified or condensed) forms of this code without a copy of the GNU GPL normally required by section 4 if you have included this license notice and URL via which recipients can access the corresponding source.
Check the GNU link for more information, it's a great resource.
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This is a bit of a controversial area.
If you only use it on the server side, then under the GPL (but not AGPL) you do not distribute it, so nothing needs to be done.
If it uses client side, you are already distributing the source in html.
edit: There is a purist element that states that the GPL license text and source clause should be in every distribution, i.e. in the comments in each JS module, but most people think it will be a little far away and will bring the network to a halt.
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