- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@sidar.org>
- Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 10:26:14 -0500 (CDT)
- To: "Patrick Lauke" <P.H.Lauke@salford.ac.uk>
- Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Patrick has hit the heart of the problem. I haven't tried it yet, but while I am sitting at a windows machine for a day I will - the money spent on stuff at IBM has resulted in some great work over the years, and I expect this to be no exception. Personally that is as far as I will go - I work hard to avoid having software that is unlicensed. But as Phill pointed out originally, and Patrick makes clear, you can't legally just use it for some months, however good it is. You can't just buy it either, as far as I could tell. Although I work mostly on free software I don't object to people making a living out of good software (heaven knows, even in our field there are some people doing it, and others making a living out of rubbish). And I don't suppose that Phill, or one of the alphaworks developers, chose the license. But it would be nice if they could pass on the feedback that the license doesn't seem to match the real world. One simple approach might be for them to sell a license at a shareware price for early adopters, with some guarantee of being able to keep using the software for a defined time. Another one, from the user side, might be to calcuate the risks of being caught using the software outside the license conditions, and IBM deciding to follow up and actually take the legal action their license entitles them to take. cheers Chaals -- Charles McCathieNevile charles@sidar.org http://www.sidar.org <quote who="Patrick Lauke"> > >> From: John Britsios > >> I use the tool since some months. > > More than 90 days? Then you're in breach of the license... > > Sorry, I think I've harked on about this enough. Point is: > I'd buy it, if I was able to (and there's the rub), because > I agree that it's excellent. > > Patrick > ________________________________ > Patrick H. Lauke > Webmaster / University of Salford > http://www.salford.ac.uk >
Received on Thursday, 28 October 2004 15:26:55 UTC