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?