🚀 go-pugleaf

/* Written 10:02 pm  Jan 25, 1986 by west@gargoyle in ima:net.database */
> *** NOWHERE *** in their advertizing or promotional literature that I
> have seen, and nowhere in their C-Isam manual (including the license
> agreement), does Relational Database Systems, Inc. ("RDBS") ever
> state that applications programmers who use their C-Isam file management
> product (i.e., link it with code that they are going to sell)
> must pay royalties to RDBS.  But recently during a phone
> conversation with someone at RDBS it was incidentally mentioned
> that I am using C-Isam with my applications programming.
> I was then informed that I must sign a royalty agreement and send
> RDBS $2500.00 before I can sell my program to anyone

What does the licensing agreement that comes with C-Isam actually say?
If it's like most such licenses, it says that you can only use it on one
machine, that the thought police will crush you if you even consider
giving it to anybody else and so forth.  So you were pretty optimistic
to think that you could redistribute it for free.

On the other hand, it is certainly true that many other C application
libraries do indeed let you redistribute them for free, and it seems
tacky that RDBS doesn't make their policy clear.  I suspect that if they
took somebody to court for unauthorized redistribution it would be an
interesting case.

By the way, RDBS's policy is a lot better than some.  Take the IBM
Graphics Development Toolkit.  There is no redistribution scheme at all --
every user of code developed with it has to get his own copy of the Toolkit.
Same for the Topview Programmer's Toolkit, in the unlikely event you wanted
to develop a Topview application.

John Levine, ima!johnl