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Macromedia SDK License: You Must Debug

Posted by timothy on from the must-work dept.

Daniel Grund writes: "I noticed Macromedia has an SDK to help programmers write software that can generate SWF files. So, being curious, I skimmed their licensing agreement to see what I could see. Amusingly enough, sections 3f and 3g actually give the SDK user the legal obligation to debug their code! Of course, only bugs that cause the SWF files to be erroneous are required to be fixed. However, in theory, if you wrote a program that makes buggy SWF files, you could be sued by Macromedia (but only if you do it using the SDK I guess.) How's that for pressure on the Quality Assurance people; you not only annoy the customers if you fail, you also get the company sued."

2 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Fed up. by Triskaidekaphobia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're probably fed up of irate users phoning them up when the flash plugin crashes playing a bad file.

    Remember windows says says

    "IExplore.exe had an exception in flash.DLL"

    and not

    "Britney.swf crashed the flash plugin DLL"

    It would be better if the plugin handled corrupt files more gracefully, but reminding flash developers of their responsibilities is a reasonable addition IMO.

  2. No embrace and extend by jas79 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It isn't saying that they will sue you for making errors. it is saying that that the software must export valid swf files.

    So, you cannot make a swf file which will only work in your own flash tool or flash player. or make a version of swf which only works on a certain operating system.