4 ms·

The licensing stuff is hard. I believe that our license is fair, even if it's complicated. You're right, many free projects offer the same or even greater func

by mstijak 10y ago

The licensing stuff is hard. I believe that our license is fair, even if it's complicated. You're right, many free projects offer the same or even greater functionality, however, you're not taking into consideration time you spend to put everything together. If your client is paying you hourly, Cx is an investment which pays off quickly. We're contractors too and this was one of the reasons behind Cx. I understand that commercial licenses are not very popular these days, but for a small company like ours, I don't see any other model allowing us to concentrate on support and the product in the long term.

Silhouette 10y ago
I do understand that it's a tricky market to work in commercially. I have nothing against charging for your work if it provides the value to justify it, and similarly I have nothing against developers paying for tools that will help them do a better job and/or save time. Your site didn't sell me on why your particular product is better than what I could do with other tools, but obviously that's a personal judgement and others might take a different view. I also appreciate that writing a good licence is hard, but yours does seem to be particularly awkward. For example, if we're developing a project for a client, our terms typically state that they will have a certain minimum standard of licence for any third party code we use, so they know they're in the clear deploying or distributing whatever we build for them. Your terms giving only a revocable licence would immediately disqualify your library, as would any other hedging about being able to use it indefinitely once it was paid for.
- mstijak 10y ago
  The license is perpetual and can be terminated only if Licensee breaks the agreement. I don't see how that can be an issue. Can you please explain the problem?
  - Silhouette 10y ago
    The stated jurisdiction is unclear and the main licence term includes the word "revocable". Unfortunately, that combination alone means the licence would contradict our usual guarantees to clients. These typically say we will only incorporate third party elements when the client has a perpetual and irrevocable legal right to use and redistribute those elements as part of whatever we're delivering. The furthest we've ever stretched this is including FOSS with widely recognised licences where there may be a well understood obligation on the client to provide the source code on demand, and some clients won't be happy going that far. The bottom line is that our clients don't want to get bogged down with the terms of third party contracts or licence agreements and whether they could undermine the whole project, so anything with the slightest hint of risk is immediately more trouble than it's worth in this sort of area.

by mstijak 10y ago

Silhouette 10y ago

I do understand that it's a tricky market to work in commercially. I have nothing against charging for your work if it provides the value to justify it, and similarly I have nothing against developers paying for tools that will help them do a better job and/or save time. Your site didn't sell me on why your particular product is better than what I could do with other tools, but obviously that's a personal judgement and others might take a different view. I also appreciate that writing a good licence is hard, but yours does seem to be particularly awkward. For example, if we're developing a project for a client, our terms typically state that they will have a certain minimum standard of licence for any third party code we use, so they know they're in the clear deploying or distributing whatever we build for them. Your terms giving only a revocable licence would immediately disqualify your library, as would any other hedging about being able to use it indefinitely once it was paid for.

mstijak 10y ago
The license is perpetual and can be terminated only if Licensee breaks the agreement. I don't see how that can be an issue. Can you please explain the problem?
- Silhouette 10y ago
  The stated jurisdiction is unclear and the main licence term includes the word "revocable". Unfortunately, that combination alone means the licence would contradict our usual guarantees to clients. These typically say we will only incorporate third party elements when the client has a perpetual and irrevocable legal right to use and redistribute those elements as part of whatever we're delivering. The furthest we've ever stretched this is including FOSS with widely recognised licences where there may be a well understood obligation on the client to provide the source code on demand, and some clients won't be happy going that far. The bottom line is that our clients don't want to get bogged down with the terms of third party contracts or licence agreements and whether they could undermine the whole project, so anything with the slightest hint of risk is immediately more trouble than it's worth in this sort of area.