RE: License conditions Re: aDesigner - was Re: Bobby - a bad tool

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