Matt
My 2 cents. You should explicitly state that it is OK to use liveTopics for educational or research uses at no cost.
It was something that I thought about when reading the license and was not immediately apparent.
Thanks
Scott

Terry: Good point. I've followed up on the main topic.

Scott: Good point. I've ammended the license for that section to read:

1. In order to qualify for the LSLA your use of the liveTopics software must be personal and non-commercial. Non-commercial use includes:
i. Use of liveTopics for teaching on a course at an accredited academic institution.
ii. Use of liveTopics for research being carried out by an accredited academic institution so long as that research does not result in commercial products or patents.
iii. Use of liveTopics by a registered not-for-profit organisation.

This discussion space is for comments on the document "liveTopics Software License Agreement (LSLA)".

So far I have gone the easy route and used the phrase:

    "personal and non-commercial use"

which implies that academic, research, etc.. are okay. I'm not clear how legally powerful this is but getting any more specific seems to trouble more than just me.

Not sure about this. Force feeding automatic updates has costs. As long as you are sure you won't ever break anything when you do this it's fine. But if you force it and then you break something it seems that, disclaimers not withstanding, you have some liability. Better to have some prompt and user opt-out thingy that does give the user some say in this.

At the moment this license does not grant the right to re-distribute liveTopics in either modified or unmodified form.

Obviously I need to update the text with the latter case, but I am less clear about the former.

I referred to The BitKeeper BKL license for advice but it doesn't seem to address this point directly. The only reference I understand is 3(b) which grants for BitKeeper to roll your modifications into the package provided such modifications are also available under the BKL.

This seems to me to say:

You can modify the software, but only provide modified versions back to us. We can sell the modified version, but we must also make the modified version available free under the BKL. Also this right extends past termination of the license.

Is this a reasonable approach?