bertrand@eiffel.UUCP (Bertrand Meyer) (02/18/90)
The following is an answer to a mail message.
My attempt at replying by mail bumped. (Hence the anonymity,
since I have no way of knowing whether the message's author wants
to be named.) I decided to post the answer since it may be of
interest to others.
The question was:
> Could you tell me what the official position is wrt Eiffel users selling
> applications which incorporate ISE libraries: can we distribute
> libraries in object form, or compiled into C? What about the run-time
> system source code?
> I think I heard that ISE have a liberal policy about this, but we
> could not find anything in our documentation which states exactly what
> we may and may not do.
It is indeed permitted to include elements from Interactive's
libraries (without paying any royalties to Interactive) in a
delivered product, provided the following conditions are met:
- Interactive's implementation of Eiffel and the associated libraries
were used to develop the product under a valid license, with
an account in good standing, and all contract conditions were observed.
- Any library extract included in the delivery in human-readable form
(e.g. Eiffel or C) carries the full notice of Interactive's copyright,
as present in the library source.
- The product as delivered uses the libraries as part of a larger system,
and the purpose of the delivery is the system, not the libraries.
Any library facility accessible to users of the product must be
available to them not directly but through the facilities offered
by the product. In other words, it is not permitted to resell the
libraries themselves, only products which use the libraries.
The same rules apply to any element from the run-time
system included in user-developed products.
We do think this policy is quite liberal indeed. In particular, there
is no ``copyleft'' requirement or other similarly severe constraint.
-- Bertrand Meyer
bertrand@eiffel.com