Years ago at a now forgotten company a whimsical older manager was starting up a first class on databases. What, he asked, is the most important thing to consider when inputting data into an application?
We young fellows stumbled around for a while, as you can imagine. Finally he delivered himself of his accumulated wisdom, which has remained with me ever since. "Never key any information into an application without knowing how you are going to get it out". If what the clause is saying is, you the developer may not use the embedded kit to create and sell a database engine + ide, a product in itself, that competes with Valentina, that seems entirely reasonable. It is exactly the problem Rev might have had if there were a cut down version of Studio, and a cheap or free player - effectively, you'd be letting loose a more or less equivalent version of the product for very little or no revenue. No one could reasonably demand that you do that. And given a choice, is the world better off with cheap versions, or with none (which in the end is the consequence of your being unable to restrict use in this way) most of us would say, better the cheap version with some restrictions. But if what is being said is that once an end user has put his stuff in, you the developer may not use the kit to extract that data in a form which he can use in some other competing database, well, no thanks. We need to get our priorities straight: its his data. Don't tell him what to do with it. I was alerted to this by an organization who had keyed in several person-years work of their own intellectual property into a database with no export provisions. When they wanted to get it out, the reply was, good luck writing your own programs, or pay us generously to do it. Whose intellectual property was it? We had no doubt, but there seemed to be some confusion in the mind of the application supplier. Post sale restrictions on use, in the EU, are unrelated to copyright. You cannot make derivative works, which are typically copyright violations, without approval of the holder. That is quite different from post sales restrictions on use, which attempt to prevent you from using the purchased property in certain ways which are legally unobjectionable. The reason why I cannot put images derived from the DVD on a T shirt without permission is copyright. The reason why Sony cannot forbid me from using the player in any way I want after I've bought it, is that post sale restrictions on use are unenforceable in the EU. But this does not mean I can use it to violate copyright. That's an independent matter. Take a tool - a plane or chisel for example. A supplier cannot make two versions, a professional one and a DIY one, and solely by conditions on purchase, forbid professional carpenters from using the DIY one for purposes of trade. Once people have bought things you can't tell them how to use them. You can void their warranty. You can exempt yourself from damages due to injury. But you can't stop them. I have often wondered doubtrfully whether, when Filemaker sells an academic version of Filemaker Advanced in the EU, and forbids the buyer to sell works made with it, that would hold up in court if challenged by some enterprising university or charity. It would perhaps be wise of both supplier and buyer not to insist on finding out. Peter _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
