west@gargoyle.UUCP (Steve Westfall) (01/26/86)
What is your opinion of this???
*** NOWHERE *** in their advertizing or promotional literature that I
have seen, and nowhere in their C-Isam manual (including the license
agreement), does Relational Database Systems, Inc. ("RDBS") ever
state that applications programmers who use their C-Isam file management
product (i.e., link it with code that they are going to sell)
must pay royalties to RDBS. But recently during a phone
conversation with someone at RDBS it was incidentally mentioned
that I am using C-Isam with my applications programming.
I was then informed that I must sign a royalty agreement and send
RDBS $2500.00 before I can sell my program to anyone
($25.00 for each of the first 100 copies I will sell)
I have no objection to paying royalties to RDBS, and I am about to
put the check in the mail, but I am concerned that, with their
royalty policy mentioned nowhere in their literature, I will be
paying them royalties while others in a similar situation
(my competitors) will not pay because no one ever told them they
had to! Does RDBS have the right to ask for royalties when they
don't publicize it?
Steve Westfall uucp: ihnp4!gargoyle!west
Infotronx, Inc.
159 W. Roosevelt Rd. Phone: 312-231-6054 (ofc)
West Chicago, IL 60185johnl@ima.UUCP (01/27/86)
/* Written 10:02 pm Jan 25, 1986 by west@gargoyle in ima:net.database */ > *** NOWHERE *** in their advertizing or promotional literature that I > have seen, and nowhere in their C-Isam manual (including the license > agreement), does Relational Database Systems, Inc. ("RDBS") ever > state that applications programmers who use their C-Isam file management > product (i.e., link it with code that they are going to sell) > must pay royalties to RDBS. But recently during a phone > conversation with someone at RDBS it was incidentally mentioned > that I am using C-Isam with my applications programming. > I was then informed that I must sign a royalty agreement and send > RDBS $2500.00 before I can sell my program to anyone What does the licensing agreement that comes with C-Isam actually say? If it's like most such licenses, it says that you can only use it on one machine, that the thought police will crush you if you even consider giving it to anybody else and so forth. So you were pretty optimistic to think that you could redistribute it for free. On the other hand, it is certainly true that many other C application libraries do indeed let you redistribute them for free, and it seems tacky that RDBS doesn't make their policy clear. I suspect that if they took somebody to court for unauthorized redistribution it would be an interesting case. By the way, RDBS's policy is a lot better than some. Take the IBM Graphics Development Toolkit. There is no redistribution scheme at all -- every user of code developed with it has to get his own copy of the Toolkit. Same for the Topview Programmer's Toolkit, in the unlikely event you wanted to develop a Topview application. John Levine, ima!johnl