Licenses (was Re: Should I add a "Micro" PDP11/73 to the Herd?)

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Fri Jun 23 13:25:56 2000

Bill Yakowenko <yakowenk_at_cs.unc.edu> wrote:
> My point it, software *could* be licensed the way the contents of
> books are; it need not imply any ill-conceived notions that hinder
> transferrability, such as binding to a CPU. The holder of the original
> media could be the legal holder of the license, just as with books.
> The book analogy could work just fine, and the market has *not*
> rejected it.

And in fact Borland used to do exactly that. Their license explicitly
stated that the software was like a book, and that they were happy as long
the software was only run on one machine at any given time (just like a
book generally can only be read by one person at a time). Wish I had a
copy of the license to type in; as commercial software licenses go it was
one of the best.

They didn't explicitly state it, but I suppose that just as you might
tear a book in two so that two people can read different parts of it
simultaneously, perhaps you could simultaneously run two portion of the
Borland software on two computers.

Eric
Received on Fri Jun 23 2000 - 13:25:56 BST