[9fans] inferno licence terms

[forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk]

i'm cross-posting this to both Inferno and Plan9 groups,
even though this discussion really only directly concerns Inferno,
because it might be of interest to people on both.

note that this is an unofficial response,
`to the best of my knowledge', and details could anyway change.
it should be reasonably accurate though: i am closely involved
in the decisions, but because we've discussed so many possibilities
i sometimes might well forget which one prevailed.  in any case, i'll
feed both the questions and answers back through the licence
development side so that both the licence and the FAQ can be made clear.

>>Given the only difference I see between a Personal License and a Corporate
>>(Enterprise?) License is the number of individuals it covers, I will ask my
>>questions from the point of view of the Licensed Entity.

  the difference is mainly who has the distribution rights: an individual
  or a company.  an individual can, however, distribute binary to a company,
  and the company will have rights to use that binary; it has, however, no rights to
  the source even if the individual is an employee (a corporate licence
  is needed).  there should be a price advantage to getting
  a corporate licence beyond a certain number of developers, but i don't
  want to discuss pricing here yet.

>>Is the License Fee one-time or recurring?

  it is a subscription scheme, inspired by analogy to a subscription to a journal or a club.
  (that's one reason gdb's earlier article was interesting.)
  it is probably close to what others (eg, Be) have as a `registered developer'.
  consequently, the answer to your question is `a mixture of both'.
  in our case, having paid the annual subscription covering a particular edition of Inferno
  -- as things stand -- we currently think we'll allow distribution of binaries based on that edition
  (or your adaptations to it) in perpetuity, even if you do not renew your subscription.
  you do, however, fall out of the set of people who can receive certain source
  from other subscribers.  we aim to add enough new material each year to keep
  people renewing their subscriptions.

>>Does the Licensed Entity have to pay a royalty to anybody? (You only
>>excluded Vita Nuova.) If so, does it make any difference if the device
>>the binary runs on is a toaster or a Cray?

  there are no run-time royalties whatever for Inferno proper.  i need to check
  the current status of royalties for a particular third-party component
  if used commercially but i believe there are no further payments due for that either.

>>Does an entity that receives a copy of binaries from a Licensed Entity
>>have commercial use rights?

  yes, as far as we are concerned. it is subject to the terms of the sub-licence
  the subscriber imposes on the entity that receives the binary.
  we provide a pro-forma sublicence.  could that include rights to distribute (sublicence)
  the binaries?  i'm not certain; i'll need to check the full licence text.

>>Does the Licensed Entity have to report to Vita Nuova any of these distributions?

  no (subject to my confirming of the status the third-party component i mentioned above).
  we're quite interested in knowing what people do with it in general, though.

>>What is the mechinism for support for the Licensed Entity?

  there is limited support included in the basic subscription scheme, but
  full-blown commercial support will be available as a separate package.
  this should make sense once you see the subscription pricing.

>>What is the mechinism for support for the entity that receives a
>>binary only distribution from a Licensed Entity? What if the
>>Licensed Entity made changes that were not sent back to Vita Nuova?

  we're still fussing with the guarantee and warranty sections of the licence,
  and consequential details of the support side.  i suppose the short answer
  is that ultimately you can get what you care to pay for, and the conditions
  would need to be reasonable both ways (ie, providing end-user support for
  something that we can't see might turn out to be unreasonable).  if the modified
  code was unrelated to the area covered by support, there should be no problem.

>* You can distribute without fee [ie, nothing payable to us] Inferno source code to
>other Inferno subscribers
>>In other words, this is not an Open Source arrangement.

  there are distinctions within the source.  some source cannot be freely distributed.
  someone noted in private e-mail that `Inferno subscribers' were mentioned only here.
  that is intentional.  we distinguish `Inferno' source code from other source
  in the same package.  a previous bullet point allowed source distribution of certain
  utilities and other source components but did not mention `Inferno subscribers'.
  that too is intentional: we allow and encourage much of the source,
  including the compiler suites, to be distributed to non-subscribers,
  even for subsequent commercial use.  for legal reasons that might need to be done by
  a sub-licence, but if so, we'll provide a suitably open pro-forma.

  we spent a fairly long time looking at what we might need to do to claim
  (honestly) to be `open source', but even within `open source' there are practical
  and ideological differences between camps.  we talked to a few people.
  in the end, we decided simply to produce `the Inferno licence' that sets out our terms;
  we have gone to some effort to keep the text of the full agreement as straightforward as possible.

Charles Forsyth
Vita Nuova