in reply to Licensing Revisited ... again and again.

Short two points:

1. I agree with your definition of 'use' in Item 6, if its not defined elsewhere. OTOH how likely is anyone to do that anyway? Some programs have 'personal' and 'commercial' versions, whereby the one is free, and the other should be paid for, but none I know of say 'no use by commercial users' (what are commercial users, anyway?) - But maybe Im wrong, and there are such things.

2. I quite disagree with your definition of 'Redistribute', why should that have anything to do with source code, and nothing to do with the actual software? Redistribute means to give to other people ('spread to other areas', says the m-w). Nowhere does the clause mention 'source', it says 'programs' and 'software'. And people *do* talk about redistributing MS software, thats what happens with OEM stuff, gets redistributed with the computers its installed on.

(I'll skip the rest, and note for the record that I havent read (the rest of) the OSD either.)

C.

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Re: Licensing Revisited ... again and again.
by jonadab (Parson) on Feb 18, 2004 at 16:45 UTC
    Some programs have 'personal' and 'commercial' versions, whereby the one is free, and the other should be paid for, but none I know of say 'no use by commercial users' (what are commercial users, anyway?) - But maybe Im wrong, and there are such things.

    Actually, that's a pretty common restriction. Off the top of my head, Netscape 3 and the old version of StarOffice (when it was still owned by StarDivision) were both free for non-commercial use (e.g., home use or in education, government, ...), but to use it in a business you needed to buy a license.

    njudge (a derivative of the Ken Lowe adjudicator) is an example of software that's free for non-commercial use, but commercial use is utterly prohibited and licenses for that are just plain not available. (This is due to an informal agreement between the hobbyist community that maintains it and Avalon Hill / Hasbro, who own the rights to the game that the software implements.)

    Read more... (620 Bytes)

    Both of these kinds of restrictions disqualify the software from meeting with OSD approval or being hosted on OSDN.

    ;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}} split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print
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Re: Re: Licensing Revisited ... again and again.
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Feb 18, 2004 at 13:09 UTC
    A commerical user is generally understood to be someone for whom the primary use of the software is in the furtherance of generating profit.

    This is different from the use of software by not-for-profit organizations or home users. For the latter, there's no money at all. For the former, there is no profit motive.

    Please note that these are the understandings (as I know them) in the US. I think the EU and the US generally track together in this, but I'm not positive.

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

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

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