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While I have never practised as a lawyer, I do have a law degree, and I've written several papers on IP and IP licensing when I was in law school. And I will al
by roel_v 6y ago
While I have never practised as a lawyer, I do have a law degree, and I've written several papers on IP and IP licensing when I was in law school. And I will also add that I did not do my degree in the US. Still, I am quite convinced that it is very hard to codify the intention of what the OP wants to do in a generic software license (i.e. one that you do not draft specifically for each client).
I do not have the motivation to lay out my full argument as that would take another entire paper, but even if it turns out to be not as hard as I think it is, it certainly isn't as easy as is posited here.
- nmfisher 6y agoI don’t know why you think it’s not possible (or that it’s anything more than trivial). Revenue, affiliated companies, third party service providers, etc are all basic legal concepts. The risk is far more likely to be inadvertently making the licence overly narrow and preventing usage by companies that you would actually intend to allow (or at least contemplate should be allowed). Regardless, the text doesn’t really matter. Most companies will run for the hills as soon as they see anything remotely like the contemplated licence. It’s just not worth the risk for them. Source: former lawyer.
- roel_v 6y agoshrug The Unreal engine mentioned elsewhere in this threat also seems very simple (an order of magnitude more straightforward as what we're talking about here I'd argue), yet if you go on the Id forums you'll find many questions from people in various edge cases that fall under one category in spirit and another in the letter of the license. But hey, I'm just some guy on the internet, what do I know, we'll just have to agree to disagree until someone really tries to find out.