9 Mar
2012
9 Mar
'12
4:03 a.m.
Christian, if there's no anti-compete clause in
the license, then please
explain what exactly clauses 3.a.v and particularly 3.a.vi do.
Also, for third party/open-source IPF stuff (other than the potential
for GPL software to be used commercially, already expressly forbidden by
3.a.v), clauses 3.d.i and 3.d.ii would also seem to expressly forbid it?
3.d.ii seems to imply that it violates the license to even convert an
IPF to other formats, which makes IPF images entirely useless as a
general preservation format because of the legal minefield they're stuck in.
Jonathan, I think you misunderstood what this is about. Before I go into
detail here, it does make sense to see how "the technology" is defined:
"The program's object code, source code and documentation are
collectively referred to as the "Technology"". Please note that there is
no reference to the file format itself.
It just clearly states one thing: You can not take a piece of our
software and use it to make another piece of software, except for the
exclusions listed. It does not say you can not invent something on our
own or work with a CatFerret or DiskWeasel or whatever device comes to
mind. It is also correct that you could not take the capsimg.dll and put
it into a competing product. You can of course write your own code, or
you could - if it's not a commercial thing - just take a look at our
source distribution. It comes with a different (adapted MAME) licence!
Please take a look yourself:
http://www.kryoflux.com/download/ipfdec_source4.2.zip
This was released to make sure the format is a) fully documented, b)
portable and c) data is not buried.
The reasons for the tight restrictions of the original (old) licence
were e.g. some companies selling game compilation CDs of questionable
origin, which usually did not give credit or pay royalties to the
legitimate copyright holders (=game devs). We did not want to support
such things. Not being able to use IPF for these (or extract the data
with our enabler) meant ADFs were used, which usually sported cracker
intros or similar, making people aware of what they had bought.
This is one of the most deceptive licenses I've
ever read; the top
preamble implies it gives the user great freedom but instead it almost
totally locks everything they've done and can do down to "a SPS product
defined by SPS". I'm going to stay far, far away from any products
Kryoflux LTD./SPS puts out unless you seriously rethink your licensing,
since by contributing to the Discferret project I'm apparently already
in violation of it.
No, you are not (I think). Unless you take parts of our product
to
enhance a competitive product, all is fine. In other (unpleasant) words:
If you make your own and don't steal, I don't see any problem there.
No wonder none of the organizations you sold your CTA
analyzer to want
anything to do with Phil's product, the license expressly forbids them
from even considering it.
Absolutely not. If they were using this very same licence (which they
don't, as it excludes commercial use) they could of course use other
products. They just could not put parts of our product into the other.