A Software License That's Libre But Not Gratis?

duncan bayne writes "My company is developing some software using Ruby. It's proprietary software — decidedly not free-as-in-beer — but I don't want to tie my customers down with the usual prohibitions on reverse engineering, modification, etc. After all, they're licensing the product from us, so I think they should be able to use it as they see fit. Does anyone know of an existing license that could be used in this case? Something that gives the customer the freedom to modify the product as they want, but prohibits them from creating derivative works, or redistributing it in any fashion?"

Comments

No license necessary

[morbiuswilters]

IANAL, but if you are not imposing a EULA, you shouldn't need any kind of license. End-user licenses restrict what can be done with the copy of the software that is owned. Licenses like the GPL restrict what can be done when redistributing the software, but impose nothing on the end-users. If you are not wanting to permit your end-users to redistribute, simple copyright is enough to protect your rights without the need for an additional license. If the software is not being redistributed and you aren't requiring a EULA, then the end-users are free to modify the software as they see fit (or do anything with it, except redistribute) under existing copyright law. So it seems copyright law as-is protects you from redistribution and permits your users the ability to modify the software, without the need of any license.

Re:No license necessary

[gnick]

Officially I think you're right. I deal with several vendors who license their stuff to us. We are often trying to work beyond what their out-of-the-box COTS customers want, so we often ask for a little bit of flexibility (APIs for developing our own aps - nothing fancy). They usually ask for a NDA, which may be a good idea in this case too, but nothing fancy.

IANAL.

Re:No license necessary

[belmolis]

This isn't really accurate. Although it is true that copyright law appears to prohibit the mere creation of a derivative work whether or not it is distributed, in fact some kinds of derivative work are not considered infringing so long as they are not published. If your interpretation were correct, annotating your own copy of a copyrighted book would constitute copyright infringement, which is not the case. You are perfectly free to annotate your books - you are not free to publish your own annotated edition of someone else's book. Similarly, it is infringing to publish a translation of a copyrighted work, but you may make your own translation and keep it for your own use.

Re:No license necessary

[scientus]

thats specifically not what the poster wants, the creator wants to ensure getting paid, therefore the licence within firefox and truecrypt that permits copying (under certain restrictions) is not acceptable in this case.

Also trademark stuff is valid for all software or anything even without copyright law even if things are in the public domain. Firefox etc all do more which is to copyleft it, making sure that people have to let each next user also view the original source, AND the contributions that any other developer makes, if they distrobute it.

Re:No license necessary

[The Snowman]

Not only is specialized software with restricted access to the source, but the person selling the software needs to have an actual contract in place, not rely on copyright law. My company does this: we develop highly specialized software, and our customers have the option of either using it in binary form, or having access to the source so they can customize it on their own (this costs more). Either way we have contracts in place written by our corporate lawyers that basically say "whatever you do, you are not allowed to sell it, redistribute it, etc." and the contract is specific to that business relationship. It names the two companies and the specific terms of the sale that is occurring, and the terms of the contract.

Relying on copyright law would likely not work very well in this case, as it is ambiguous enough that to this day people are arguing about it in court.

slashdot legal advice?

[drDugan]

um, like, hire a real lawyer. really, dude.

this sounds like "Shared Source"

[Anonymous Coward]

which was the name of Microsoft's family of "not quite open source" licenses a few years back. Several products allowed you to examine the source code but do little else. I don't think they even allowed you to modify and recompile it in those days, but they've since replaced it (IIRC) with the "Microsoft Permissive License" which might be less restrictive.

One product I remember was Rotor, a sample implementation of the .Net Common Language Runtime (similar to Mono but not as comprehensive). Another was the WTL Win32 GUI framework, which was an alternative to MFC based on ATL (Active Template Library).

Slashdot was even more heavily anti-MS a few years ago and there used to be withering sarcasm at any mention of "Shared Source"... not so sure about today.

Wait, what?

[Timothy Brownawell]

gives the customer the freedom to modify the product as they want, but prohibits them from creating derivative works

Modifying the product is creating a derivative work.

My company is developing some software using Ruby. It's proprietary software â" decidedly not free-as-in-beer â" but I don't want to tie my customers down with the usual prohibitions on reverse engineering, modification, etc. After all, they're licensing the product from us, so I think they should be able to use it as they see fit.

Look into selling them a copy of your software, instead of a license to use a copy of your software. US copyright law does permit people who actually own a copy of software to make certain kinds of modifications (don't recall what exactly), make the needed copies to actually use it (disk -> ram, etc), and such.

You are looking for a non-libre license.

[pthisis]

Something that gives the customer the freedom to modify the product as they want, but prohibits them from creating derivative works, or redistributing it in any fashion?"

This question shows a total lack of understanding for what "libre" software is.

A license along those lines would not be "libre but not gratis". Being freely redistributable and allowing derived works are core parts of "libre" software.

All the common definitions of "libre" software (OSF, DFSG, etc) include statements like:

"Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale."

and:

"The license must allow modifications and derived works"