Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 10:23:26 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@btsslc.com> To: Stephen Mathezer <mathezer@newera.ab.ca> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Licensing and liability issues for commercial development Message-ID: <199601261717.JAA12758@freefall.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <59931536@toto.iv>
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Stephen Mathezer writes:
> I'm just curious about how people out there deal with licensing and
> liability issues when producing software for FreeBSD.
>
> We produce backup software for many platforms and as such we need
> to be concerned about what happens if something breaks. Licensing
> with gcc is also a question.
>
> What if we write software to back up a FreeBSD machine and it gets
> lost due to a FreeBSD bug? How can we cover our butts in this
> situation?
Don't warranty your product on unsupported platforms. Of course, this
means you'll have to sell it for *a lot* less. ;^)
> The Gcc license stipulates that for software compiled with gcc, object
> must be made freely available. We don't really want to do that. Plus,
> what happens if gcc tightens the license further?
Bzzt! Wrong! You don't have to give away code compiled with GCC at
all! If you include any of the GNU libraries, you have to give them
away, along with some way to rebuild your program with (supposedly
fixed) libraries. Moral of the story: used the FreeBSD libraries, and
leave the GNU routines out of your commercial code.
> Basically I'm just curious as to how people out there handle these
> issues because we are getting more and more requests to support the
> free Unices and are currently refusing them all because of the
> above concerns. This is a shame because we use our product in
> house on FreeBSD machines and I personally am a fan and run FreeBSD
> at home but we can't see a way to support it commercially.
Go back and read the licensing information that comes with GCC.
You'll see that your licensing concerns are unfounded. As for the
supportability issue, I've never bought software that came with any
kind of warranty; the best is the Borland license. Plagarize it --
Phillipe wants you to! ;^)
--
I'd rather be sailing.
Wes Peters BTS SLC wes@btsslc.com
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