Re: Are debian/ubuntu distributions "commercial applications" from a legal point of view?
Laszlo Lebrun wrote:
> Do you know about any jurisprudence about that question?
I'm pretty sure that commercial applications in legal use means
something different to commercial software applications, so I'd say
that the act of distribution itself is sometimes a commercial
application.
I'm not aware of a particularly clear definition of "commercial
application" in law but I'm no lawyer.
One definition from Football Association Premier League Ltd & Ors v QC
Leisure & Ors [2008] EWHC 1411 (Ch) seems to be "for the purposes of
trade and [...] for commercial use" compared with private, which is
"for his and his family's personal use and only at his home or
workplace".
However, note that the debian free software guidelines are broken
by software which limits commercial applications, so they should not
be part of the distribution. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
Hope that explains,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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