From: Alan Olsen <alan@clueserver.org>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 11:58:31 +0800
To: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: PGPsdk is now free for non-commercial use
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19971116182556.0072fe08@popd.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199711170358.TAA14061@www.ctrl-alt-del.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 06:53 PM 11/16/97 -0800, Lucky Green wrote:
>
>At 06:25 PM 11/16/97 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
>>I'm pleased to see PGP Inc. permitting development of freeware,
>>but at leased from a first reading of the license, 
>>it's a _really_ restrictive definition of "freeware" - 
>>not only does the software have to be free, but it can only be used 
>>in extremely restrictively non-commercial activities.
>
>The idea is simple: you make money from software that costs the authors
>lots of money to develop or use their software in a business environment
>(=to make money), you have to pay the people that spent time, effort, and,
>yes, money, on making it happen.
>
>Sounds reasonable to me.

I can see where they want to make a profit, but the licence makes the
software virtually undistributable by normal shareware channels.  

>From what I have read of the license it is against the license agreement to
ship the libraries on a CD of shareware products for which a price is charged.

If I were to create a program using the libraries and upload them to Simtel
or one of the other big archives, it could not be distributed on a Simtel
CD-ROM that someone was charging money for.  (Ignoring the usual export
issues.)

I see this as a big problem.

---
|              "That'll make it hot for them!" - Guy Grand               |
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