GPL as an evaluation license

[Nadav Har'El]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2011, Aviad Mandel wrote about "Re: GPL as an evaluation license":
> 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.

What if Google (just a silly hypothetical example) takes that library and
uses it on their servers, to understand spoken commands sent over the network
by their users? Remember that with GPL software, the users have a right to
not just use your software as-is, but can also modify it and/or extract the
parts which are relevant to their own use-case.

As I said, I don't know what your actual intended use case is, but once
you release something in the GPL, people might legally use it for other
purposes than what you originally intended.

I'm not saying it's a huge problem - I just said it's something you should
consider before going with the GPL.

> 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.

Perhaps. On the other hand, the 10 lawyers who wrote the GPL had a completely
different goal in mind than your goal - so while it may perfectly protect
software freedom (the GPL's goal), it might less perfectly protect your
business interests as you see them.

That being said, I have released software under the GPL (e.g., hspell), so
I'm definitely not against it ;-)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |        Sunday, Apr 10 2011, 6 Nisan 5771
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