On 5/12/20 2:36 AM, Software Manager via gimp-user-list wrote:

Hello Team,

Hi Shravani,

As you know due to COVID-19, all the Academic Institutes across Australia have compulsorily planned to deliver the Academic requirements to be accessed from home, as such Latrobe University is no exception.

In the light of present situation Latrobe is building a VDI (Virtual Desktop Interface) for staff and students to access the software and have a distance learning environment. I am aware that GIMP 2.8.16 is a freeware with no restrictions of usage, however I could not find any limitations/restrictions related to Virtual Desktop Interface on your website.

Thanks & Regards
Shravani Gopishetty

you won't find such restrictions and limitations on www.gimp.org because GIMP is distributed as Free Software as specified in the Free Software Foundation's Free Software definition.

Quoting from https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html, you have the following four essential freedoms:

" The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).

The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
"

This doesn't leave any room for usage restrictions - this is the definition's purpose, and is considered a good thing :)

But please, do consider to offer a more recent version of GIMP than 2.8.16 - the current stable version is 2.10.18.

-- Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD

On 5/12/20 9:02 PM, B. Jack via gimp-user-list wrote:

I'll just add to this that GIMP is also not under the GNU Affero Pulbic License [APL] (GIMP is vanilla GPL), and thus the Affero's consideration of access via a networked service (ie: VDI) as dissemination of the software, which would restrict this particular use case, does not apply.

Even if GIMP was distributed under the terms of the GNU AGPL, there is this

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html#section13

"Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access[...]"

and this

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AGPLv3InteractingRemotely

"If the program is expressly designed to accept user requests and send responses over a network, then it meets these criteria. Common examples of programs that would fall into this category include web and mail servers, interactive web-based applications, and servers for games that are played online.

If a program is not expressly designed to interact with a user through a network, but is being run in an environment where it happens to do so, then it does not fall into this category. For example, an application is not required to provide source merely because the user is running it over SSH, or a remote X session."

So unless we claim that GIMP is a network-based image editor (and I doubt that the current Script-Fu server really qualifies to support that claim), this would still not give us a handle to prevent this use case - it would only possibly guarantee access to modified source code, but I'd find even that doubtful due to the answer to that FAQ.

If it should provide us with such handles, then I do not see how, and, it would be good if you could point out the relevant sections of the GNU AGPL and/or FAQ entries.

--
Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD