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> 3/ No distribution of SMSQ/E may be SOLD, except > for the official distribution. This interdiction > includes that of including and distributing > SMSQ/E in Public domain libraries. > > Official distributions will be sold in compiled > (binary) form, possibly together with the > official distribution as source code. For such > sales, for the time being, two > distributors/resellers, namely Jochen MERZ (JMS) > and Roy WOOD (QBRANCH) have been appointed by > the copyright holder. Resellers provide support > for the versions sold by them. ... can you say me how exactly the license requires the resellers to provide support? In our private discussion you went to great lengths to ensure me how they are required to provide support but I can't find absolutely nothing specific about it in this license. Specifically you have promised me that the resellers will be required to fix bugs and hire people for it if they can't do it themselves. Personally I am very disappointed by this license. Lets call things by name. It is not a license but a non-disclosure agreement - why you insist calling it licence is beyound me. You would probably save yourself and others lots of trouble if you would look at some proper commercial NDA. Usually a license would give me some rights, this strange elaborate only gives me the revocable right to read the code. It is also worth noting that the license is subject to change anytime without giving anyone even the slightest guarantees what the next license will look like. This means that anyone who will want to do something with SMSQ will have to seek separate agreements with all other copyright holders, not a pretty situation. The license says the code is copyright TT. This a void claim which only describes the current state. The license is designed to taint SMSQ by 3d party code. There is absolutely no protection against patent traps, the possibility to include code without publicaly available source invites all sorts of copyright trouble and there is also the separate agreements I have mentioned above. The license doesn't say it, but from personal emails with Wolfgang I conclude that there are people who want to write code for SMSQ in exchange for future royalty payments. There is nothing evil about commercial software development but we have a few problems here. There is no choice for the users and other developpers whether they want this 3d party commercial code. A bigger problem here is that some of the developers who want to write SMSQ code for commercial interests also decide about the license, basically this license is their work. For me this is an unfortunate combination, it is a guarantee that SMSQ will never be even close to opensource. Philosophically this is a very interesting concept: People who would like to contribute for free do not even get the right to use their contribution, those who will contribute commercially and seek separate agreements will also receive a share in the decissionmaking of the copyright/licensing as a reward. Interestingly, not all legitimate commercial interests are served equally humbly here. When Peter Graf tried to acquire the right to give away (for free) SMSQ-Q40 binaries in exchange for a substantial payment to TT he was turned down (not because he offered too little money btw). This means that Peter has no means to ensure that SMSQ will be available for the Q40/Q60 in the future - and that after having invested horrendeous amounts of money into SMSQ development for functionality that isn't even implemented until today. Sorry to say but this is just racketeering. Given this precedens it also means that other HW developpers would be completely insane to invest money or effort into SMSQ without special agreements that will only make the overall situation worse. Wolfgang you are welcome to give us your *guarantees* that I am wrong. Last not least, there is the purely practical braindamage of the licence. I did quite frequently write drivers for HW which I didn't have installed myself, with SMSQ I would be required to smail the source changes for each development cycle to someone having the hardware - I am not even allowed to S P E L L the changes over phone line!! Not that I would consider touching the code with a 100 ft pole. If there is 1 good thing about NDA's than its that a closed circle of developers can work relatively free of any hassle. Wolfgang has managed to combine the worst of all possible licenses here. Also the license has interesting holes. Supposedly SMSQ is sold in exchange for giving support, but what is with unfinished products? What happens when there is nobody who would be willing or able to give support and sell SMSQ? I have explained Wolfgang privately why there will never be SMSQ for UQLX with this license. Even if someone does the necessary changes there will be nobody to sell the binary. Neither Jochen Merz nor Roy Wood can not do it - because they lack the possibility to do any sort of support for Unix platforms they can't sell it. Just a quick estimate, they would have to support at least 15 different Unix platforms and OS/2 running an interesting variety of CPU's. I've never even seen all of them myself. I assume this situation pretty much serves the commercial interests of those who created this license because certainly Wolfgang was informed about the problem and had the possibility to solve it. Who cares whether a few hundred users are locked out. Richard PS: Wolfgang has informed me that he considers disassembling SMSQ binaries illegal. I found this rather amusing after attempting for over 2 years to support SMSQ and finding workarounds for a few SMSQ bugs by disassembling it. I will comply by removing all workarounds for bugs and deficiencies in SMSQ from my programs. PS2: please keep the 'cc: ql-developers' as I suspect quite a few developpers don't read this list regularly