Avoiding LispWorks Personal annoyances
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From: gnubeard on 27 Sep 2009 20:13 On Sep 28, 5:44 am, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavall...(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > On 2009-09-27 12:48:52 -0400, Dave Searles <sear...(a)hoombah.nurt.bt.uk> said: > > > In fact there's an explicit denial of that: the right of first sale. > > He's talking about the free trial version. Since there hasn't been any > sale, it's difficult to invoke the right of first sale. > > -- > Raffael Cavallaro Yeah, there is a distinction to be made there -- but I think it would be for the courts to decide (if they have not already) whether the right of first sale is primarily the right of a person who has spent money, or whether it is the right of a person who has obtained a legitimate copy (whatever the cost, and whether it is free or not). If I bought a piece of software at my expense, and then gave it to you free of charge, would you have the right of first sale? I.e. - you are the legitimate holder of the software now, you have the original media, license agreement, and so on -- are you now allowed to use that copy, in privacy, any way you like? I imagine you would be. The fact that LW supplies a legitimate perpetual-use license for LW Personal to me, free of charge, is the main point.
From: gnubeard on 27 Sep 2009 20:18 On Sep 28, 1:07 am, Pascal Costanza <p...(a)p-cos.net> wrote: > This sounds reasonable to me. You could have saved yourself some effort > if you had told this to the LispWorks guys. As far as I know, they are > quite helpful in providing unlimited evaluation copies for a limited > timeframe (of a couple of months, or so). I've seen this sort of thing mentioned a few times in this thread. It is quite encouraging to know that the staff of LW is this helpful. It certainly goes a ways toward encouraging me to buy a copy when the time comes. OTOH, this whole kludge was really very little effort. I really doubt anyone at LW could have received my email, gone through whatever process they have for supplying such an evaluation, and gotten back to me about it in less time that it took to develop the replacement gettimeofday().. I've spent an order of magnitude more time responding in this thread, for instance :)
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 27 Sep 2009 21:01 On 2009-09-27 20:13:22 -0400, gnubeard <gnubeard(a)gmail.com> said: > If I bought a piece of software at my expense, and then gave it to you > free of charge, would you have the right of first sale? I.e. - you are > the legitimate holder of the software now, you have the original > media, license agreement, and so on -- are you now allowed to use that > copy, in privacy, any way you like? > > I imagine you would be. In your hypothetical the free copy is obtained from a previous purchaser. In the case at hand the free copy is obtained from the copyright holder with specific license conditions. > The fact that LW supplies a legitimate > perpetual-use license for LW Personal to me, free of charge, is the > main point. Yes, but that license has conditions and those conditions must be obeyed or the license is void. Whether or not resetting one's system clock violates those conditions would be a question for the courts to decide, but it's distinctly possible they'd see it as deliberate circumvention of the terms of the license. -- Raffael Cavallaro
From: gnubeard on 27 Sep 2009 22:48 On Sep 28, 11:01 am, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavall...(a)pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote: > On 2009-09-27 20:13:22 -0400, gnubeard <gnube...(a)gmail.com> said: > > > If I bought a piece of software at my expense, and then gave it to you > > free of charge, would you have the right of first sale? I.e. - you are > > the legitimate holder of the software now, you have the original > > media, license agreement, and so on -- are you now allowed to use that > > copy, in privacy, any way you like? > > > I imagine you would be. > > In your hypothetical the free copy is obtained from a previous > purchaser. In the case at hand the free copy is obtained from the > copyright holder with specific license conditions. > > > The fact that LW supplies a legitimate > > perpetual-use license for LW Personal to me, free of charge, is the > > main point. > > Yes, but that license has conditions and those conditions must be > obeyed or the license is void. Whether or not resetting one's system > clock violates those conditions would be a question for the courts to > decide, but it's distinctly possible they'd see it as deliberate > circumvention of the terms of the license. > > -- > Raffael Cavallaro Agreed, but the Personal Edition license doesn't mention the limitations of that software compared to Professional or Enterprise at all. The license restrictions, as set out in the text, are a prohibition against commercial use, and a prohibition against redistribution. Thats all. If I don't violate those license terms, there is no violation.. regardless of what else I do to the software. The release notes for the software make it clear that the limitations in personal edition are there to enforce the non-commercial use of Personal edition - by making it not a viable option for commercial use (time outs in less than a work day, small heap size, no binary creation). It seems to me that you, and others, are thinking of LW Personal in the same way as some other commercial evaluation packages that give you a 30-day trial or something. Some of those packages probably mention that the user is prohibited from using the software after 30- days, and also put in time-out code to enforce that. If this technique is applicable to such packages, using it would be in violation of the license because the license itself mandates you are allowed to use it only for a given period of time. That is not the case with LW Personal. It is not an evaluation licensed to me for a given amount of time. It is a full package, licensed to me perpetually for non-commercial use with some technical limitations designed to make it useless for commercial use. Circumventing one, or all, of those limitations while continuing to use it non-commercially is not in violation of the license agreement.
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 28 Sep 2009 00:05
On 2009-09-27 22:48:10 -0400, gnubeard <gnubeard(a)gmail.com> said: > Circumventing one, or all, of those limitations while continuing to > use it non-commercially is not in violation of the license agreement. "You may not translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify or create derivative works based on the materials, except as expressly permitted by the law of this Agreement." Seems to me that your hack entailed some reverse engineering (admittedly simple, but reverse engineering nevertheless), which reverse engineering was not expressly permitted by the agreement. Seems to me like you've laid yourself open to section 16. "16. Termination. The Vendor may terminate this Agreement if you fail to comply with any of the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Upon termination, you shall cease using the Software and shall destroy or return to the Vendor all copies of the Software." As a practical matter, I doubt LW would come after you. If you've no intention of ever buying, they can't be bothered as you don't represent a lost sale. If you might eventually buy, they'd be harassing a potential customer. Naturally I don't speak for LispWorks so it's completely possible that they take an entirely different view. What does seem pretty clear is that you've violated the terms of the license by reverse engineering the time limitation and circumventing it. -- Raffael Cavallaro |