steve@UMIACS.UMD.EDU (05/05/90)
Here, at long last, is the summary of responses I got to my question (a month ago) about OSF licensing. I asked people to tell me whether they were a government, commercial, or educational institution; whether or not they licensed sources successfully; what problems they had; and who they talked to. I received only ten responses (plus the local experiences, that makes eleven), so the sample isn't quite as large as I'd liked. One response detailed two experiences with licensing. Two other responses were from people who were after binary distributions, and I didn't include those responses in the numbers below. Another response was from someone at OSF who suggested that I join the OSF licensing SIG. Time and financial constraints prevent me from doing so, however. The fractions below indicate that someone's supposedly got a license 'in the mail' from OSF to the licensee, or that someone had a problem that might not have been all that bad (from their description). Commercial sites: attempts: 6 success: 4.5; 2.5 with problems Educational/govt sites: attempts: 4 (including UMCP) success: 2 (ditto); 1 with problems (UMCP) From the responses I got, and from our own experience, the biggest problem with licensing was with getting the OSF people to *call back*. Almost everyone who had problems had problems because they couldn't get the OSF legal people and/or help desk to respond to paper mail, voice mail, or even their phones. Some names were named as the people who were causing problems (by being particularly guilty in this regard, or in other ways); I will be more than happy to provide these names to OSF upon request by them. One person said he called and asked for information. He left his name and number on the answering machine, and was never called back. It appears that the OSF charter prohibits OSF from offering different license agreements to different organizations. Thus, if one organization needs a license modification, that modification must be made available to other licensees, also. This is likely to make the licensing problem somewhat hairier for someone requesting a modification for the first time. One person I talked to at OSF said that OSF is willing to make modifications; previously, I'd thought that maybe OSF simply couldn't make a change to its licenses without dissolving and re-incorporating itself so that it could change its charter. If you hear that OSF can't make license changes, someone is either misinformed or is lying to you... One notable response pointed out that one organization has *seven* departments who have all tried to get Motif sources at some point. All have failed because of legal issues. Our experience here was interesting. After sending out my request for information, I was called three or four times by two different people at OSF. They finally got the paperwork straightened out, and the Motif source tape arrived this week. (I've been holding off on my summary because I knew something was afoot, and I wanted to give OSF the benefit of the doubt.) I don't want to give out their names to everyone, since I suspect that if they get pestered a lot, they'll be somewhat less inclined to jump in and help. If you're really stuck on a Motif (or, presumably, OSF/1) source licensing issue, drop me a line, and I'll see what I can work out. I do have an archive of the responses I received. I don't want to send them out without checking with the authors, but if there is interest, I can go check back with them. Let me know. If you don't feel that this summary is adequate, let me know that, too, and maybe I can come up with some more information. -Steve Spoken: Steve Miller Domain: steve@umiacs.umd.edu UUCP: uunet!mimsy!steve Phone: +1-301-454-1808 USPS: UMIACS, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742