[pmwiki-users] Commercialism in PmWiki (was: Google Analytics)

mike moller mike.moller at gmail.com
Sat Aug 26 04:13:12 CDT 2006


On 8/26/06, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 12:08:09AM +0200, Carlo Strozzi wrote:
...
>
> > I think that the licensing change issue arises from
> the fact that some corporate users may want to be able to re-distribute
> PmWiki, or parts of it, together with proprietary stuff of their own.

No, this isn't the reason for the additional license, and the
license I'm adding doesn't permit redistribution.   It really is
like a traditional EULA.  For the foreseeable future, the only
license that will allow redistribution of PmWiki is going to
be the GPL.
......
I have to say it's been most entertaining to watch this thread develop over
the last couple of days with the expected astonishment at the behaviour of
PHBs together with "why would anyone have a policy that forces them to pay
for something they can get for free?"

The issue for PHBs and the more so for the more intelligent of their
colleagues goes back to a fundamental point of contract law. There are a few
things that must be present in order to establish a contract that is legally
binding on all parties to it. One of these is "considerations" Briefly this
means that a binding contract must have both something tangible that passes
between vendor and purchaser AND ALSO something tangible that PASSES BETWEEN
PURCHASER AND VENDOR. The adoption of a GPL licensed software product by a
corporation fails to create a contractual relationship because it fails to
pass a consideration from the purchaser to the vendor. Therefore if all
turns to custard the corporation has no-one they can sue because they
haven't established a binding contract.

If you've travelled in such circles it's no surprise that when you observe
the policy that says all contracts and agreements must be scrutinised by the
corporate legal department you getback a memo telling you to go find a way
of forming a proper contract or else you can forget about the proposed deal.
PM is proposing in his new licence option to get these guy's off the hook
which is great and deserves our, the PmWiki Community's, support. I suggest
we just let him get on with it so he can devote his time to further
developing the product rather than arguing with us lot.

-- 
Mike Moller
Lallybroch Alpacas
New Zealand
www.lallybroch.co.nz
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