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From: weiser.pa@Xerox.COM.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: XVision Distribution
Message-ID: <870707-102928-2935@Xerox>
Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 13:29:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: Xerox.870707-102928-2935
Posted: Tue Jul  7 13:29:21 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jul-87 06:28:53 EDT
References: <8707070005.AA12302@houdini.UNM.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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As a person with a bit of experience with licensing University software,
I find your license agreement to be a reasonably good one.  There are
three clauses that I object to, and I thought you might find these
comments useful:

The clause about not rewriting in another language is unduly restrictive
for a research product.  If the intent is to prevent circumventing the
license by a rewrite, then just say that.  But what if I want to make a
lisp version, or a C++ version, because that is what my research
demands? Perhaps you mean to handle rewrites on a case-by-case basis--if
so, I hope your intent is to say 'yes'.

The clause about indemnifying EECE is remininscent of the onerous
Berkeley license.  The University of Maryland, and many other places,
was unable to sign contracts requiring them to indemnify others.  Its
too bad to see this in here.  It will give you grief.

The business about a single back up copy is silly.  This is Unix, you
know.  People just do their normal backups, and that results in as many
copies as its results in on the backup tapes, and by making this
provision you make people suspicious that (a) you are not serious, (b)
you are making sure ALL of your licensee are in violation.  You don't
even restrict how many copies (non-backup) your licenses can make.  The
implication in the license is that you are offering a kind of SITE
license, and the holder can use the software on as many different
machines as they want as long as they are all theirs.  I think this is
good, this is the same way we did the Maryland software distribution.
But then why buy problems by making a single-copy-backup provision?

Hope you find these comments useful.

-mark