} My first problem is, whom to ask about any legal questions
} related to our plans. I've found the name of Brent Chapman
} mentioned in the doc's, but maybe there are other people I have
} to ask, so I'm adressing this question to majordomo-workers.
Although Brent is no longer the primary maintainer/developer of the
software, he issued the copyright and all questions will hinge on his
original LICENSE agreement. Everyone in majordomo-workers who has
contributed to the advancement of the code has, by virtue of the
LICENSE, agreed to the terms of the software's use and release.
Coincidentally, I just recently asked Brent about specifics of his
"commercial licensing", and this was part of his response:
--- Forwarded mail from Brent Chapman <Brent@GreatCircle.COM>
>From GreatCircle.COM!Brent Sun Nov 10 16:25 PST 1996
X-Sender: brent@miles.greatcircle.com
Message-Id: <v03007829aeac20e4cf30@[198.102.244.42]>
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19961105221505.002f4354@www.sandiegoca.ncr.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 16:23:44 -0800
To: Bill Houle <Bill.Houle@SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM>
From: Brent Chapman <Brent@GreatCircle.COM>
Subject: Re: Majordomo licensing
Status: OR
At 2:15 PM -0800 11/5/96, Bill Houle wrote:
>>Brent- how do you handle your commercial licensing for Majordomo? Do you
>>just track usage, or do you actually work out some royalty agreement?
Basicly, I try not to issue commercial licenses; so far I've been 100%
successful... :-) The "commercial license required" stuff in the License
file is there to keep somebody from aggregiously abusing the work that lots
of folks (including both you and me) have put into Majordomo, for their own
profit. The revised license in the 1.94 distribution
(ftp://ftp.greatcircle.com/pub/majordomo/License) elaborates on what folks
can do without requiring a "commercial license", like charge for installing
and managing Majordomo but not for the software itself.
>>FYI, I have released a Majordomo Web front-end (MajorCool) with a poor man's
>>free-to-use license similar to yours. I have recently had an inquiry for
>>commercial use. I would like my 'license' to mirror Majordomo's.
Like I said, I try to convince folks that they should do things in such a
way that they don't need a commercial license... Not sure what I'd do if I
ever actually issued one; take the money and put it into some sort of trust
fund for Majordomo development, maybe? Actually, that might not be a bad
idea; pay a good tech writer (like Jerry Peek or somebody) to do some
quality documentation for the package, since that's something that seems to
be a low priority for the volunteers (myself included) who are perfectly
happy to contribute new complexity in the form of new code...
-Brent
----------------------+----------------------------+------------------------
Brent Chapman | Great Circle Associates | 1057 West Dana Street
Brent@GreatCircle.COM | http://www.greatcircle.com | Mountain View, CA 94041
----------------------+----------------------------+------------------------
Internet Tutorials from the Experts!
--- End of forwarded message from Brent Chapman <Brent@GreatCircle.COM>
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