Tolkin, Steve said:
> > From: J. Scott Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 1:57 PM
> > To: 'Tolkin, Steve'; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: RE: [Boston.pm] How to ensure user sees and agrees
> > to a license
> >
> >
> > Why not have it as part of the download instead of the
> > software itself i.e.
> > make it an HTML page that they have to pass through to
> > actually download it.
>
> Good idea but there are several problems:
>
> 1. We do not have a web site for things like this,
> and creating that would be even harder.
>
> 2. A web site does not let me limit who gets this.
> I plan to distribute it first to a certain group of people,
> my fellow members of the W3C XML Query working group.
> What the program does is generate XML instance documents
> whose structure and content can be specified in a simple way.
> Basically these will be test cases for the XQuery language.
> I plan to distribute this by posting to our members-only
> mailing list. But I want members to be able to provide a copy
> to a co-worker who might be the actual user.
Aha! You want to grant them the rights to make additional copies, not
place restrictions on it's use! This, you can do (and, in fact, is what
the BSD, GPL, LGPL, and MIT licenses do). Key here is to understand the
basis of copyright law - it says only the copyright holder has the right
to make new first copies. So, unless you grant them, via license, the
right to make new copies to pass on, they don't have it (they can pass
their copy on). This one's easy. Put whatever restrictions you want to
make on their ability to pass new copies to someone else in the license.
Include the license with the SW, and (as the GPL does), include the line:
"You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.
However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the
Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you
do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the
Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of
this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing
or modifying the Program or works based on it."
Modify to suit your needs, but keep the general thrust - this license is
the only thing that gives them the right to redistribute new copies. If
they don't agree to it, they can't redistribute.
> If the program proves useful I will attempt to get permission
> to distribute it to a larger group, and maybe even
> change to an open source license.
That would be great. Hope this helps
jeff
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Jeffry Smith Technical Sales Consultant Mission Critical Linux
[EMAIL PROTECTED] phone:603.930.9739 fax:978.446.9470
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Thought for today: hello, wall! excl.
See wall.
