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List:       ruby-talk
Subject:    Re: Practical considerations for licensing software written with dynamic/non-compiled languages/plat
From:       "Joshua J. Kugler" <jkugler () bigfoot ! com>
Date:       2005-04-15 9:34:18
Message-ID: 200504150133.53138.jkugler () bigfoot ! com
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On Friday 15 April 2005 01:14, Matt Pelletier said something like:
> What options does one have, as a company that produces software that
> is distributed directly to clients/VARs, when that software is built
> with a platform/architecture that uses a dynamic (non-compiled)
> language, and further, when that platform and/or language is
> open-source? This question qualifies for Rails and Ruby, but also it
> could hold for PHP, Perl, etc.

<SNIP>

It really does come down to a matter of trust.  You can put strong 
language in a license agreement, but it does rely on trusting your 
customer to not "take your code and run."  Really.  There are lots of 
examples, but a good one is:

http://www.brownbearsw.com/calcium/WhatIsIt.html

Brownbear makes a great bit of calendaring software. So good in fact, 
that I went with it for a project over every other open source 
calendaring solution I could find.  Their entire product is written in 
Perl, which means you get (and can modify, but not distribute) the 
source code.  They are still going strong, if their client list 
<http://www.brownbearsw.com/clients.html> is any indication.  Can 
someone steal your code?  Yep.  Do you then crawl in a hole and program 
no more?  Well, that's really up to you.  Everything with possible 
benefit involves risk, so you just have to decide how much risk you 
want to take.  That's really the bottom line.

Sorry if that was a downer...wasn't meant to be.

j----- k-----

-- 
Joshua J. Kugler -- Fairbanks, Alaska -- ICQ#:13706295
Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, in heaven, on earth, and 
under the earth, that Jesus Christ is LORD -- Count on it!

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