GPL as an evaluation license

[Aviad Mandel]

Thanks for your answers. But I feel we're not on the same page. This
demonstrates it best:

I don't know what your library is about, but have you considered other uses
> your library might have? E.g., what if Google, Facebook, or some other
> company
> which builds a million machines for its own use, decides that it is useful
> and uses it?
>

As I've already mentioned, the whole thing is in the embedded software
domain. It seems like you're all thinking about software running on desktops
and servers, but what about DVDs, TV sets, cameras, microwave ovens or
whatever electronic device you could think of?

How about a software library that understands speech, to be run on a
microwave oven? The potential customer wants to try it on their real
microwave, and have it running on a few real kitchens just to learn that
speech from the TV set turns in on accidentally. Or something.

Even if a company making microwaves could, in theory, release the other
software running on the machine (the cooking timer? Hitec.) they will buy a
license to get the issue off their minds. That's the way it usually works.

So there a are a few differences:
(1) The software's goal is distribution in a product, burned on the flash
memory of some e.g. microwave oven. So I couldn't care less how many times
they use it in-house.
(2) The industry has to be much more careful with licensing, because once
the product has left the factory, you can't submit a patch. An electronic
company will buy a license if there's any doubt, as opposed to a server
farm, which may remove the problematic software if necessary.
(3) There is no dynamic linking, because there's a simple OS or none at all
on those small processors.

I hope this clarifies why GPL's limitation of distribution is so appealing
as an evaluation license: It stops the evaluation users exactly at the point
where they want to really use the software, in embedded terms. And if I'm
not wrong about the whole idea, a well-polished license like GPLv3 is by far
better than anything I can come up with, with or without ten lawyers, since
it's written based upon experience with legal issues worldwide, which I will
never be able to do.
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