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Re: Licence of SteelBlue



Scripsit Tomasz Wegrzanowski <maniek@beer.com>

> QUOTE :
>   b.  All distributed modifications to the Program shall immediately
>       become subject to a permanent non-exclusive royalty-free right
>       hereby granted to TCG to include such modifications in the
>       Program as it may determine from time to time, and the
>       unrestricted right to distribute such modification in all future
>       versions of the Program, without obligation to User of any kind.

> PROBLEM:
> They seem to claim that every *.diff to program is automagically
> licensed to them, what is false. ILLEGAL.

No, they *require* that the licensee licence his modification to
them, which is legal enough. In a sense, the GPL also says something
similar: roughly, "if you distribute modifications, you must give us
(and everyone else, by the way) the same rights to your modifications
as we give you to the original".

> QUOTE :
>   c.  Upon distribution, the source code of all modifications to the
>       Program must be made available free of charge to TCG as
>       specified on the Web page at
>       http://www.steelblue.com/modifications/ .

> PROBLEM B :
> You can't make distribution (to a friend, for example) without
> making magick and sending all patches to them. NON-FREE.

Agreed.

> QUOTE :
> 5.  TERMINATION.  In the event of any default or failure of User to
>     abide by the terms hereof, this license may be revoked by TCG
>     without prior notice and all rights granted hereunder rescinded.
...
> PROBLEM :
> Everyone can see what's wrong here, don't you ?

No. It's very common in licenses, free ones too, to say that the
license terminates if licensee does not meet his obligations (which
typically include not attacking the freedom of the program). Saying
so is strictly redundant, since that is the way contracts normally
work, but it does not harm if some paranoid lawyer wants to state
the obvious explicitly.

> They not only want to have you patches for free, they also want you to
> give your copyrights to them. ILLEGAL.

Not nice, but in which jurisdictions do you think it is actually illegal?

-- 
Henning Makholm                                "You are in a little twisting
                                            maze of passages, all different"



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