Re: licensing perl code

Personally, I think you're looking at the problem wrong. Instead of enforcing a license in the code, enforce it in the legalities.

I would go ahead and have your legal department write up a license that meets the financial needs of the client. Make sure you cast the license not as a "pay me continuously for source code". Instead, cast it as "Pay me once for source code and pay me continuously for updates and support".

The difference is licensing the after-sale relationship, not the sale itself. Remember - no-one who's smart will ever get code without a support license, regardless of how implicit it is. That's why RedHat has a growing business, even though they give away their Linux distro.

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

Comment on Re: licensing perl code

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Re: Re: licensing perl code by marvell (Pilgrim) on Apr 10, 2003 at 08:32 UTC
The idea is to stop them installing it on multiple machines and giving it away to their mates, rather that anything else. The relationship is specifically "pay me proportionately to how much you use the product". Code based licensing is a lot easier to manage than trust, catch and legal. -- Steve Marvell	[reply]
Re: licensing perl code by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Apr 10, 2003 at 08:52 UTC
Do you always consider your potential clients to be criminals? Copying code without a license is illegal. I'd say, don't do business with criminals. Besides, if they really are criminals, they probably have the means and the will to crack whatever you cook up. Compiled code can be decompiled. License keys can be broken. Code based licensing is a lot easier to manage than trust, catch and legal. I used to work for a company that sold software with a price tags up to several millions of dollars. And the customers could get the source code for free as well. We never had a problem that code was copied illegally. But then, we didn't deal with the maffia. Abigail	[reply]
Re: Re: licensing perl code by marvell (Pilgrim) on Apr 10, 2003 at 14:40 UTC
The problem is that the product has a number of different user types. The most interesting one of these is the one that pays loads and they are not worried about them at all. It's the download it off of the web and sort it out yourself type that is the concern. -- Steve Marvell	[reply]
Re: licensing perl code by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Apr 10, 2003 at 15:14 UTC
Re: Re: licensing perl code by marvell (Pilgrim) on Apr 11, 2003 at 14:04 UTC
Re3: licensing perl code by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Apr 10, 2003 at 14:26 UTC
Let me get this straight - you want to enforce whether or not I have installed your libraries on two front-end servers vs. one. What if they're a pool serving the same website? What if I run more than one website on the same server? How do you license that?!? More importantly, even with protection of library and the like, how do you enforce that? Also, you're talking about compiling and the like. Well, that has never stopped consulting firms from giving their consultants free copies of Windows 2000 or Visual Studio, Professional Edition. (I know several people who have received both for free.) Now, those people can never call up Microsoft and receive support for those products, nor can they receive free or reduced-price updates. (They shouldn't be able to receive bugfixes, but Microsoft apparently lets bootleg copies be patched.) How are you going to do better than Microsoft in the licensing arena? If you're not going to trust your client to some minimal degree, don't do business with them. I mean, they might not pay you and then you'd be up a smelly creek without a paddle, wouldn't you? ------ We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age. Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement. Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.	[reply]