[ On Wednesday, March 1, 2000 at 23:21:09 (EST), Jeffrey Altman wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: SSH grants free license for SSH Secure Shell for Universities
>
> > In short, SSH grants universities around the world a free right to use
> > SSH Secure Shell free of charge within their organization for
> > non-commercial use. This includes both Windows and Unix versions.
>
> Please be very specific with your definition of "non-commercial use"
> in your license.
Indeed! You might also want to make inquiries to a legal authority who
is unbiased and knowlegable of copyright laws in other jurisdictions.
It is quite possible your "non-commercial use" license is no more worthy
than a shrink-wrap trade secret license in some places.
I.e. in some jursidictions it would appear to still be impossible to
enforce a "no-commercial-use" license under the copyright law if the
software in question is freely distributed, and especially if it is
freely re-distributable. The copyright law would seem to be intended to
protect how a work is published and distributed, not how legally
obtained copies are used by their legal owners.
If you want to control how your software is actually used (i.e. as
opposed to the way the word "use" is meant in copyright law) then you
have to enter into individual binding contracts with every user you
provide your software to. Anything freely redistributable obviously
cannot be controlled by individual legally binding contracts.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Secrets of the Weird <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
