Saw a forum post from 2020 ( How do I make it so that a project is impossible to see what's inside? - #2 by pumpkinhead ) and the answer said that closed-source Snap! programs were, on the whole, prohibited. However, I can’t seem to find the FAQ, and in the ToS it says “Snap! is free software. It is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, which permits unlimited use for any purpose by anyone“ which would include commercial use. It does mention that “if you make a modified version of Snap*!*, you must make it available under the same terms as our version, including the provision of source code.“ so is that what the FAQ entry was referring to?
You are allowed to sell and distribute your project files, but you cannot sell projects shared on the snap community website (basically using the built in share button).
However, due to the nature of how snap project files work, I’m not sure it’s very practical to sell projects, because it’s very easy for someone to just buy your projects, and then upload and share it for anyone to access for free. The first post you linked talks about how it’s impossible to keep someone seeing the code for your program.
OKAY so I just realized that the Affero General Public License is just the full form of the acronym AGPL, which was cited in the FAQ entry cited in the post.
After reading sections 0, 1, and 2, I think I figured out where the misunderstanding came from.
TL;DR: the question is whether or not any Snap! program is legally considered “a work based on [Snap!]“.
FAQ quote (which I still can’t find) says that anything that quote “includes Snap!“ counts as this. This does not really help the ambiguity at all, as this could mean ‘contains the source code of Snap! by virtue of being a fork of it’ OR ‘contains Snap! code’. (programming languages being programs often leads to these sorts of confusions) Though, this does lean towards pumpkinhead’s interpretation, as an exe made partially in Snap! would need to use some code from it to interpret. (Current) ToS, on the other hand, seem to imply the opposite interpretation, saying that the program can be used for ‘any purpose‘ under the GNU license, as long as the source code isn’t used to make a fork of Snap (in which case it must also be released under AGPL). As for the AGPL itself, it says quote “The output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a covered work“. Which is again unhelpful as it provides no examples as to what would constitute a covered work. The definition of covered work in AGPL is “either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program.“, so hence the TL;DR at the top. I’ll look into this later though, as I feel there’s probably some legal precedent about what exactly that means. Going by the ToS though, the Snap! legal team only seems to count modified versions of the language itself as works based on it, so if they’re not published or shared on the website, it should be fine. Not legal advice tho, double check yourself if you want to do this, y’all. (really, that should go for things that are legal advice too).
Oh and you can publish as an exe using Snapp I’m pretty sure.
Well, snapp hasn’t been updated in ages, and doesn’t work with new projects, so it’s basically unusable now.
The ToS should probably be clearer about this, but we do not consider your projects as containing or extending Snap! itself. [Fine print: If your project uses the Extension API to extend the Snap! language, then yes, that’s an extension.] When we get around to updating the ToS I’ll make that clearer.
But we’re allowed to impose rules on projects that you publish on our web site. And one of those rules is that if you publish a project here, you are implicitly agreeing that you want other people to be able to use that project; if not, don’t publish it!
huh. that’s a shame. not even a message on the website.
got it. what ab sharing?
oh I just saw the last updated. 5 years, jeez.
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