RE: The OSD and commercial use
David, I've missed most of this thread, but do have a good real-life example of the case where commercial use much more expensive than personal use. Here in the US, commercial local phone service costs roughly 3x that of residential local phone service. You get the exact same thing, but you're subsidizing the local service for all of the people in your community. James -Original Message- From: David Woolley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Subject: Re: The OSD and commercial use Imagine if you went to a store and say a display of chairs. Imagine the price tag said Non-commercial sitters: free; commercial sitters: $100. Imagine I'm sure I could find counters to even this, point, although they tend to involve the fact that commercial buyers buy through different channels. It can work both ways - some things are almost impossible to buy as a consumer, at least in sensible quantities. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
RE: click-wrap is legally supportable?
Russ-
Very interesting. And (though again, I'm more of a technical guy, not a
legal
guy) the implications seem to go deeper than this. Supposing a developer
on my team, who has no authority to enter into contracts for my company,
builds a portion of our product using a GPL'd product. Or, even further
down the food chain, supposing I license a product from a 3rd party vendor,
and a member of *that* company used a GPL'd product without company consent
(and thus their product is not GPL'd).
Since my *company* has not consented on either occasion- does the license
hold?
Regards,
James
ps: I'm definitely playing devil's advocate here- not trying to figure out
a way around the license. :)
-Original Message-
From: Russell Nelson [mailto:nelson;crynwr.com]
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 9:43 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: click-wrap is legally supportable?
I wonder if you are deemed to have accepted a click-wrap license
if software requiring a click-wrap appears on your machine? Have you
agreed to every license which was clicked past on your machine? What
if an employee with no authority to bind the company to a contract
clicked? What if someone who has no ability to enter into a contract
clicked (e.g. your kid)? What if a repairman clicked? Or the cable
guy clicked? In the various cases which are claimed as precedent, did
the judge get asked these hard questions?
-russ
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/26/2311244mode=thread
tid=172threshold=2
Posted by Cliff on Monday October 28, @08:33AM
from the fishy-practices dept.
{e}N0S asks: The cable guy came over to install a cable modem at my
Dad's house. As I watched him do his stuff I noticed he was installing
something called Broadjump Client Foundation. I know you don't need
software for a cable modem to work so I asked if it was necessary. He
said he had to do his list of things, and we had to sign that he did
his list of things, otherwise he couldn't leave it with us to
use. Since I can always remove the software, I agreed, but I noticed
while he was flipping through the install, he was clicking 'agree' on
every EULA that came up. Doing a search on Google for 'Broadjump
Client Foundation' comes up with some pretty scary stuff as far as
what it does, like: 'Builds a database of subscriber demographics and
buying behaviors to help evolve and refine marketing efforts.' Now,
how does this affect us? Neither myself or anyone in my family agreed
to the software; the cable guy did. And is there anyway to get cable
companies to stop doing this as I can imagine since the cable company
is a monopoly in this town, that the percentage of people who still
have this software on their computers is pretty high.
--
-russ nelson http://russnelson.com |
Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | businesses persuade
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | governments coerce
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX |
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
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RE: a proposed change to the OSD
Russ Open Source friends, I'm fairly new to this group, though immensly interested from a perspective of how Open Source and for-profit corporations can work together- so please grant me a *little* bit of leeway. I've tried to stay out of the discussion, as I am in no way an expert in this field. Though the last comment pushed me over the edge into the world of participation. I just tried to visit the website to see if BitKeeper's license is already OSD approved- but the site isn't there. It's part of my argument, so I'll go out on a limb and assume it is OSD approved. If not, you can safely ignore part of this email, though it's only half of the argument. :) I would think it bad faith to change the definition based on a pending license in order to be able to specifically exclude this license. This may not be the case- but from the (very) outside- that's what it looks like. Also, I would think it counter productive to change the definition when an existing license already has such a clause- you'd either have to revoke approval on the existing license (again bad faith), or you're in a very difficult situation when people suggest new licenses based on that one. After all- an approved license contains an un-approvable clause; so there's a valid case for a precident argument. Russ writes: Yes, BitKeeper's public license. But there's also a pending license (Sybase) which requires that users indicate their assent to the license through click-wrap or equivalent. *Users*. It looks like the Sybase license might be on an approval track; that maybe it meets the current OSD definition. But someone doesn't like a particular clause in the license- and without a rule that specifically prohibits said clause, there's no justification to deny the license so change the rule and the license can be denied? I don't see significant harm in users indicating consent via click-wrap. As a matter of fact, my lawyers insist on it when I write commercial software. Excluding such an action (which according to our lawyers makes the license slightly more enforcable) will not encourage commercial entities to participate in Open Source. I would hope that the OpenSource.org community would actually encourage commercial entities to find a way to participate. That's where I am now- trying to figure out how to make payroll (including my own salary) for a commercial project that is Open Source. But it didn't work for Eazel... Maybe I'm in the wrong place? If click-wrap is specifically excluded, then our product and desired license also won't meet the OSD. So maybe it will just have to be open source (with a lower case O and S)? Please don't take my remarks as intending to be inflamatory- I'm not trying to push the Gospel of Gates on your group. :) I'm just trying to figure out if there is a way for Commercial and Open Source to co-exist; or better yet live symbioticly. Regards, James E. Harrell, Jr., CEO Copernicus Business Systems, LLC -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Partial OpenSource products/licenses?
Open Source friends, Pardon if you find this off-topic. I tried to retrieve the FAQ from the list, but it doesn't exist, and can't seem to find a list charter. Can't find a good list search either. Anyway, I've read many of the licenses and some of the posts, but I don't see a good way to do what we're interested in. My question to this group pertians to bridging the gap for commercial applications and the world of Open Source. Quite simply, is there a license (or would this group ever consider a license) that allows for a Partial Open Source product- perhaps a 95% Open Source license? Here's a little reasoning, comments flames and criticisms are welcome, while constructive discussion is encouraged: -- We have a product that we are considering publishing as open source. The product would be available for free download and use. Some features would be limited though, and only available if you purchase a commercial license. Thus, a portion of the code (containing a license key manager) would necessarily be closed-source in order to prevent someone from easily removing the license checking. We enjoy many of the benefits of open source software, and would like to contribute back. The major base of our software has some good stuff in it- that we're more than happy to publish and allowing anyone else to use/copy/redistribute, etc. We would like to do so in a way that allows us to still produce commercial products that are (paritally) closed source. After all, we have a payroll to cover. ;) Of the major companies that appear to be making money on open source products, it appears the primary method of doing so is via related services. However, services do not scale as well (commercially) as do products. So I'm searching for the happy medium. Thoughts? Regards, James Harrell, CEO Copernicus Business Systems, LLC -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
