I am not a lawyer either, but I have been working with the practical side of licensing with small and very large corps for 20+ years. So I guess you could say I am less uncomfortable with legalese than some other non-attorneys. Still, IANAL and TINLA.
I would advise any client of mine NOT to use the Cougaar software, or anything else presented under the Cougaar license as cited in your message, because it is _fundamentally_ self-contradicting. While I found several contradictions in quick scan, I agree that the biggest and clearest issues are in what a Licensee can do with a Derivative Work. You can "sell" it, but cannot "charge for the Cougaar Software or Derivative Work"; the Licensee "maintains all rights", but must "place any and all Derivative Works in the public domain"; the Licensee can "sublicense" the Derivative work, but by giving it back to the Licensor who will give it away, the effect of the Licensee's sublicensing it is taken away. One does not have to be an attorney to wisely choose to avoid this license. Cheers. dj ***************************************************** Don B Jarrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] 512 266 7126 home-office Digital Thinking Inc. 972 467 6793 cell ***************************************************** > -----Original Message----- > From: Mikael Andersson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2003 7:35 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Cougaar license meaning. > > > The cougaar[1] license is written in what is > probably good form for a lawyer. > Problem is, i'm not one. And to make matters > worse, english isn't even my > primary language. > Esp paragraph 3,4 by themselves and together > really boggled my mind as to what > i could and couldn't do with the software > and derivative works of it. > Paragraph 15 is also a bit hard to > understand since i don't know much about > the laws of Virginia at all and wonder if > it's mean something except that the > licensor has choosen a court by convenience. > > If anybody really understands it i'd be > happy to hear about it. I don't think > it fits the open-source definition though, > albeit i'm not sure due to the > legalese. > > [1] http://www.cougaar.org/documents/license.html > > /regards Mikael Andersson > -- > license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3 -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3