I'm not seeking legal advice, just a little conventional wisdom perhaps. I'm trying to understand whether a traditional Flex enterprise app requires an end-user-license agreement (EULA) or a software-as-a-service (SaaS) agreement. This website,
http://techcontracts.com/2011/09/12/dont-use-license-agreements-for-software-as-a-service/ states: "If the customer puts a copy of a software application on a computer—downloads it, installs it from a disk, etc.—the deal calls for a license (e.g. EULA). Copyright law gives the software’s owner a monopoly over the right to copy it (to “reproduce” it), so the customer needs a copyright license to make a copy and put it on a computer. But in a SaaS deal, the customer doesn’t put software on a computer, or copy it at all. The software sits on the vendor’s computer and the customer merely accesses it via the Internet. With no copies, copyright plays no role in the transaction, so the customer doesn’t need a copyright license. Rather, the customer needs a simple promise: “During the term of this Agreement, Vendor will provide the System to Customer.” In other words, the customer gets a service in a SaaS deal, not software. The vendor just uses software to provide the service. The vendor operates like an Internet service provider (ISP). Earthlink and Comcast and other ISP’s use millions of dollars of software to give their customers Internet access. But they don’t give their customers copies of that software. Rather, they provide a subscription to the service made possible by that software." I can understand AIR applications fall into the EULA agreement since they are "installed" on the client. But what about browser-based apps using the FP plugin? On one hand, the software runs in the browser and is is not installed (at least not traditionally installed, e.g. as stand alone software); on the other hand, unless the software accesses a backend, the software resides in cache and runs completely on the client computer (no internet connection required after it loads). I can see it both ways. Anyone go through this before and can shed some light on it?
