Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
In other words, software delivered as service is now officially not covered by the GPL.
...the community forced the provision out as indicated in the FSF's 61-page rationale document [this latest draft
We have made this decision in the face of irreconcilable views from different parts of our community. While we had known that many commercial users of free software were opposed to the inclusion of a mandatory Affero-like requirement in the body of GPLv3 itself, we were surprised at their opposition to its availability through section 7. Free software vendors allied to these users joined in their objections, as did a number of free software developers arguing on ethical as well as practical grounds.
The article concludes that while this is the right decision, it places real limits on the long-term significance of the GPL: "The future is networked. The GPL isn't."
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OS Licensing for SaaS
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Open Source came before, if not provided a platform for, Software as a Service. Open Source Licenses have a big loophole for the most common method of software distribution today.
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