> <theoretical> > How is one supposed to register a product when the company does not > exist anymore?
You aren't. If the company doesn't exist, and the product wasn't explicitly transfered into the public domain, you can't purchase or register that product, and therefore you can't legally use it unless you purchased or registered it before the company dissolved. If you did purchase it before the company dissolved, you typically can't make any changes to it unless the source code was placed in escrow before the company dissolved. > If a company goes out of business and you can't register the product, > does it ever become legal to share a license key with someone else? No, I don't think so. > It the company doesn't exist, there would be no entity from which you > are stealing. > </theoretical> That's kind of silly. You could just as easily say that, when a company goes out of business, you can help yourself to their physical property. Software, like every other business asset, is owned by someone. Of course, you're unlikely to get in any real trouble, since the company is out of business. There's a term for this sort of software - "abandonware". Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ Fig Leaf Software provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized instruction at our training centers in Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, or on-site at your location. Visit http://training.figleaf.com/ for more information! ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected] with the words 'unsubscribe cfcdev' as the subject of the email. CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by CFXHosting (www.cfxhosting.com). An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
