At 12:19 PM +0200 on 7/11/99, M. Uli Kusterer wrote:
>>If you give the three-year agreement to give a copy of them at cost, which
>>is a pain in the a**.
>
>Anthony,
>
> I don't think so. There are few people which are interested in C++ source
>code, especially among the users of a product like OpenCard. Also, how many
>of those will actually want to change OC's sources, and will want to
>explicitly order the sources? I think what it boils down to will be maybe
>50 CDs commercial distributors would have to ship, and that's not that much
>work.
But it applies to the mom-and-pop shop, too. It's not only huge companies
that are stuck with that clause: A small one-man company would have to have
a spearate set of source code CD's pressed -- even if they were only
pressing a thouysand program CD's. It'd be quite expensive, and very
annoying. And there is, of course, the problem of defining "at cost". Does
that include overhead? If not, small distributers are screwed. If so, how
do you know how many will be ordered, in order to distribute the overhead?
> If that works, it doesn't sound bad. But I don't want any virus spreading.
The GPL varients are all like viruses.
>
> OTOH we could drop all these licenses and release this as copyrighted
>FreeWare and require people to give credit to us somewhere visible and
>would also prohibit selling the sources or removing any copyright notes. Of
>course, mis-use would be rather easy, but there'd still be people who'd
>send in the sources.
Mis use is always fairly easy. It's just a matter of do we want to police
it? If we go with something like the Artistic, we won't have to: It allows
commercial distribution.
