I bookmarked this link. Thank you for good job!

QrfUYz

I'm considering warranty disclaimers, here are some I've found.

http://www.intranet-server.co.uk/copyright.htm
http://www.rcp.co.uk/terms_conditions.htm
http://www.epicpc.co.uk/tech/disclaimer.htm
http://www.danieljackson.co.uk/pocketpc/disclaim.html
http://www.xsystems.co.uk/machinehead/disclaim.html

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
http://www.bitkeeper.com/manpages/bk-bkl-1.html

They all use similar but not exactly the same language. My intention for the license is to KISS wherever possible. Does anyone know what the actual required text to disclaim warranty is (if any)?

Edited by author 09-09-2002 03:35 AM
Something I would be really interested in knowing is what people think of the idea of being forced to use autoUpdate if they use the free license?

This is an idea put forward by the BitKeeper people as one of the conditions of free use of BitKeeper, the idea being that as a free user you contribute by always running the latest version of the code. This in turn means that the latest version should be well tested.

Now, in principle, I am against doing auto updates without the users consent and, at the moment, liveTopics comes with auto update disabled. However Marc's activeRenderer comes configured the other way around and I assume he doesn't have people complaining about it (Marc?)

So I am guessing that the idea of autoUpdate coming enabled doesn't necessarily bother too many people (sample size).

However this moves it on a little by saying that you won't have a checkbox, you won't be able to turn auto-update off.

What do people think about that?

[Note: I would only do this anyway if it was possible to only autoUpdate to *release* versions. I wouldn't want to try and force people to always be on the latest beta!]

Do I need to mention re-distribution of an unmodified version in conjunction with another product?

After a comment from Scott Adams I have ammended the section of the LSLA that concerns personal & non-commercial use 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.

Edited by author 09-08-2002 11:23 AM
Terry Frazier has brought up an interesting point regarding the LSLA, specifically what risks do I incur if I enforce auto-updates on users and something goes wrong?

Obviously it is not in my interests for anything to go horribly wrong as I don't want to upset users however inevitably if a thing can go wrong at some point it will.

In the first place I will have the warranty disclaimer protection. The risk a user incurs with auto-update is not really any greater since, in theory, an update could be defective whether it was installed automatically or manually. It's not clear to me that auto-update increases my risk.

Secondly if something is going badly wrong then this is a good way of catching it quickly. This is part of the service that the users provide in return for the software.

However as I said before I'm not looking to put anyone's data at risk. So how can we avoid that situation?

1. Auto-updates don't necessary get *every* change. It may be that user's only automatically get version upgrades and not alpha/beta releases.
2. Auto-updates should make good backups.
3. Provide a failsafe rollback mechanism
   

Thoughts?

I have posted a first draft of what I am calling the

liveTopics Software License Agreement (LSLA)

for review:

The document is here.
The comments on the document are here.

I have tried to keep the philosophy of Larry McEvoy's interview & the BKL in mind as I wrote it.

I would really appreciate any comments or criticisms (no matter how scathing). Feel free to curb my control freak tendencies!

Warranty disclaimers.

I see a lot of language in different licenses disclaiming warranty. A lot of it seems badly worded, confusing, etc.. I wonder how much is actually written by a legal expert and how much has been copied from other warranties by people like me!

Can anyone point me at a definitive warranty disclaimer?

Hi folks,

Prompted by David I have begun looking into what it means to say "commercial use." As I mentioned before I tried writing down what I meant by that and I got pretty confused, pretty quickly.

Looking on the web most of the language I find is of the form:

    "only for your personal, non-commercial use, "

without defining it also. It seems like there is a "collective understanding" without a formal understanding. This is somewhat verified by the fact that you can tell me some activity e.g. "we sell software for profit" and I can probably tell if you if that is commercial or not.

I can find definitions for commercial use of materials such as this one:

    "Commercial use is defined as the use of any product offered for sale, lease, rental or barter on any level, or use in advertising."

    [From http://www.zondervan.com/desk/rights.asp?Page=permbible]

but not of activity (at least not that doesn't end in a 404 error).

Does anyone have a reasonable definition of commercial activity?

My alternative seems to be to follow the crowd and use phrases like "personal, non-commercial use."

This is probably okay since, as a previous poster stated, I am unlikely to be in a position to afford to persue "license dodgers" through the courts.

Thoughts?

Edited by author 09-06-2002 09:38 PM
http://www.thoughthorizon.com has a commercial bent in that it supports my consulting as a knowledge management consultant. I refer potential clients to it as a common resource. However, as you can see, it's available to all.

But to be fair to Matt, this is not a discussion about my site. We can take that up via david@thoughthorizon.com

In /m12 David asks whether I think ThoughtHorizon is commerical or not.

I have to say I don't know but my gut feeling is not. I don't see any evidence of commerical activity: no adverts, no sign of anything for sale, no offer of services.

So I'd turn it around: is it meant to be commerical?

Of course this leads to the question: What do we mean by commercial in the first place?

I tried to define that for myself on the tube last night and didn't get very far!

Hi Matt and everyone
This is a very good discussion to be having. I've been considering these licensing issues for myRadio, in a very similar way, though not as much depth. So, it's very cool.

A few scattered thoughts, on licensing and business plans.

+ myRadio is designed for extendability by other developers. I'd like to see an "extendable" license, where use of the bundled tool set is covered by the same license. This could also work for tools that myRadio integrates with (like aR) and non-myRadio tools - for example bundled together in an enterprise solution, as has been discussed with evectors. Of course, these tools will be free to enforce any license of their choosing if they wish.

+ There's great potential in the bundled enterprise solution, from a marketing perspective. How would fees be distributed? And how would a single registration for a set of tools be implemented?

+ Licensing to Userland would be brilliant.

+ Definitely solicit donations. Without even asking for it, I have received donations for myRadio. Super cool. At the moment, I am only working for myself, by semi-choice. Donations are a great motivator, though not enough to survive!

+ Any registration scheme is easily defeatable in Radio, because of the open code. Yes, portions of source code can be removed for distribution, but unless the entire tool removes source code, there is always some place to defeat this protection. Is this a worry?

I am out of my element when it comes to monetizing the technologies, so any suggestions, for myRadio and others, are welcome.

Hey Matt sorry not to weigh in sooner. Frankly, even though I am a lawyer, I don't know enough about the many intracacies of software licensing to speak on this issue (especially since if I were to speak I think people would assign too much weight to what I say, since I am a lawyer). It sounds like you and Marc have a good understanding of each other's objectives and there is no friction there (quite the opposite) so that's good. I think Marc's suggestion of putting out a Tip Jar is a good idea; I'd definitely kick in some dough and would also try to drum up business for you (and for Marc too). Start there. liveTopics is a really cool tool, and I think it (along with activeRenderer) add important functionality to Radio.

> (4) I should consider offering a PayPal/Amazon Tip Jar option for non-commercial users who wish to contribute to the development of lT.

Good idea. Let me know if you raise any money that way. If it works for you, I'll consider it for aR.

> (5) I need a "Powered by liveTopics" logo that users may put on their sites if they wish (or not, if they don't)

Great for visibility and linkbacks. I'll try to find someone willing to design a Powered by activeRenderer logo. I've found out that including a 'how this works' link with aR activated interfaces works well.

Thanks Marc for that, and for all your help thus far. I do appreciate it.