On Wednesday, July 14, 2004 9:43 PM (close enough to midnight), wayne
wrote:
I have every reason to believe that folks like Harry, Jim and
Bob have the best of intentions to try and get a license that
is acceptable to all parties.
Thank you, Wayne.
My layman reading of the Caller-ID license raises the following
issues:
1) In Section 2.1, the license granted by MS is nontransferable and
non-sublicensable. So, it is my understanding that if I create a
hunk of software that implements SenderID, I must license it. Now,
if I upload this hunk of code to sourceforge and source forge
starts to distribute it, do they have to go get a license also?
What about all the linux/*BSD distributions, will each of them have
to obtain a license if they bundle my code? Does each ftp server
that mirrors one of these distribution have to get a license?
These kinds of issues are not as much of a problem for commercial
products since there would be contracts and such saying that these
folks are acting as my agent and that these other distributers
aren't creating a new product. However, in the open-source world,
I would expect many of these distributers to change the code, fix
bugs, or add features.
2) In Section 2.2, the Caller-ID license requires *adding* a term to
the existing licenses. Sorry, but I don't think anyone is going to
want to change the BSD or GPL.
3) In Section 6.3, in order to obtain a license, I must either use
certified snail mail, or a fax machine to request a license. I
don't have a fax machine, so I'm stuck trying to send certified
mail and waiting for a reply. So, if you find a bug in my
open-source implementation of SenderID, you can't just fix it and
put a new version up on your ftp site, you have to go running
around getting licenses and wait until you get a response back from
MS.
These are good questions. I've added them to the list I'm working on
with our attorneys.