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End User License Agreement DISCOURAGES download of some "Free" products

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Pius Onobhayedo, modifié il y a 10 années.

End User License Agreement DISCOURAGES download of some "Free" products

Junior Member Publications: 25 Date d'inscription: 23/04/09 Publications récentes
Hello all,

1. Apart from the free plugins that are produced by Liferay, a number of products have appeared in the Marketplace that are also tagged as Free. Unfortunately, however, the associated End User License Agreement (EULA) totally discourages their download for any professional usage. An example is
Carousel Portlet by XTIVIA, Inc. The EULA gives the impression that the Licensor can choose to terminate the License to use in a way that could frustrate the Licensee. See ...

[indent]
"
11. Termination.

This Agreement is effective until terminated by you or Licensor. ... Upon the termination of this Agreement, you shall cease all use of the Software and destroy all copies, full or partial, of the Software.
"
[/indent]

For any professional, this kills confidence in the use of such plugin even though it is supposed to be tagged as "Free".

2. The fact that the EULA is common to different products from different developers suggest that it may have been centrally created by Liferay. The code developers may not have reflected on the practical implications. A pointer to this is the fact that even though the developers typically publish the source code, the EULA still warns against attempt to decompile, in order to get the source code. See ...

[indent]
"(ii) decompile, reverse-engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of, modify, or create derivative works of the Software, any updates, or any part thereof (except as and only to the extent that any foregoing restriction is prohibited by applicable law or to the extent as may be permitted by the licensing terms governing use of any open-sourced components included with the Software);
"
[/indent]

Such contradictions also kill confidence.

3. Suggestion: Free and open source software in the market place ought to be clearly tagged as LGPL. If the intention is commercial, then, it should be clearly tagged as "Commercial" and not "Free".

4. Do others share my concerns or am I getting something wrong?

Thank you.
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Szymon Gołębiewski, modifié il y a 10 années.

RE: End User License Agreement DISCOURAGES download of some "Free" products

Regular Member Publications: 246 Date d'inscription: 08/06/09 Publications récentes
Thats a very good analysis of Licence. I agree with you that this should be change. The best option would be to provide additional descriptions like FREE (LGPL), FREE DEMO, COMMERCIAL.
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Corné Aussems, modifié il y a 10 années.

RE: End User License Agreement DISCOURAGES download of some "Free" products

Liferay Legend Publications: 1313 Date d'inscription: 03/10/06 Publications récentes
Hi Pius,

First let me point you to an earlier discussion on the word "free" used by Marketplace.
UPDATED link to discussion

IMHO a free 'coke' doesn't mean that you get the secret formula with a bottle , nor the right to deconstruct it.
One might just want to share his idea/product (song) but does not want you to steal that idea for your own benefit.

11. Termination.
This Agreement is effective until terminated by you or Licensor. ... Upon the termination of this Agreement, you shall cease all use of the Software and destroy all copies, full or partial, of the Software.

Your dotted line states:
upon any failure to comply with any term(s) of this Agreement.

IMO: If i catch you misuse my plugins , only then i can legally force you to stop using them.

Someone sharing Plugins for "free" probably doesn't want to bear any liability nor does it want to support this Plugin into eternity.
They probably neither do not want to put in a lot of effort/cost in the legal stuff and just want to share this with little to no obligation.
A custom EULA per developer/plugin would raise the bar to submit a "free" plugin.

A generic FREE EULA is exactly what it is a 'document' that at best we only read once and then assume it's generic for all other Plugins but the exceptional Custom EULA.

Different versions as FREE LGPL(any other), FREE Commercial, FREE DEMO make it IMHO all too confusing.

Your interpretation makes it clear to me that we @componence should make our own EULA and you hire a lawyer reading all EULA's before downloading emoticon

Never the less i think raising this question is a good thing, so thanks for that.
Regards, Corné
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Pius Onobhayedo, modifié il y a 10 années.

RE: End User License Agreement DISCOURAGES download of some "Free" products

Junior Member Publications: 25 Date d'inscription: 23/04/09 Publications récentes
Hi Corné,

Thanks for drawing my attention to the earlier thread about the subject matter. I think that some questions still remain to be answered:

1. Can a plugin made available for "Free" be used for a professional deployment under such EULA?

2. Will financial gain from the deployment of "Free" plugin constitute an abuse under such EULA?

3. Does the Licensee have perpetual right to use the plugin if no abuse? The EULA needs to be clear on this.

4. Can the Licensee modify the codes to suit his/her specific professional purpose?

5. Is it really complex to clearly specify a plugin as "Free and Open Source" or "Free and Proprietary" or "Commercial and Open Source" or "Commercial and Proprietary"? I think that clarity is very important for professionals to be able to make proper business decisions. There is no doubt for example, that Liferay portal has two versions - A Free Community Edition as well as a Commercial Enterprise Edition. I think that the marketplace needs such clarity.


Best regards.
Pius
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Corné Aussems, modifié il y a 10 années.

RE: End User License Agreement DISCOURAGES download of some "Free" products

Liferay Legend Publications: 1313 Date d'inscription: 03/10/06 Publications récentes
Hi Pius,

Pius Onobhayedo:

1. Can a plugin made available for "Free" be used for a professional deployment under such EULA?
2. Will financial gain from the deployment of "Free" plugin constitute an abuse under such EULA?
3. Does the Licensee have perpetual right to use the plugin if no abuse? The EULA needs to be clear on this.


I think all these questions are answered here;


The Software is being licensed, not sold. Licensor hereby grants you, subject to the terms and conditions contained within this Agreement, a non-exclusive, non-assignable, non-sublicensable and non-transferable, except as permitted by Licensor, license to install and use the Software.

The terms of this Agreement will govern any Updates to the Software provided by Licensor that replace and/or supplement the original Software, unless such Updates are accompanied by a separate Agreement, in which case the terms of that Agreement will govern.


1. Yes it grants you any kind of deployment since it is not specified otherwise.
2. No since it is not specified as limited
3. Yes, only until it changes with a next Update/Release.

Pius Onobhayedo:

4. Can the Licensee modify the codes to suit his/her specific professional purpose?

This depends on the specific EULA. IMO this generic EULA does not grant you this right.

(i) transfer rights or usage to, sublicense, rent, lease or otherwise copy, transfer, transmit or distribute the Software, or any portions thereof, to a third party;
(ii) decompile, reverse-engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of, modify, or create derivative works of the Software, any updates, or any part thereof (except as and only to the extent that any foregoing restriction is prohibited by applicable law or to the extent as may be permitted by the licensing terms governing use of any open-sourced components included with the Software);

4. Ownership.

Title, copyrights, intellectual property rights, international treaty and other rights as applicable, and all other legal rights in the Software and all modifications, enhancements, derivatives and other alterations of the Software regardless of who made any modifications, if any, are, and shall remain the sole and exclusive property of Licensor. The license for use granted herein is limited to the Software and does not transfer any ownership or any other intellectual property rights from Licensor to you.


I think you cannot change/enhance the code and sell it as yours under LGPL (copyleft) either. The main reason why LR 6.0 changed licence from MIT to LGPL. Read up for historians.
I do not know if a pull request is legally sufficient. Probably your complete fork needs to refer to the original code/owner and all your code has to be publicly available and free.

Regarding your previous concern "suggest that it may have been centrally created by Liferay" : The Plugins are explicitly not from Liferay inc.

You hereby acknowledge that this Agreement is concluded between Licensor and you only, and not with Liferay, and that as between Licensor and Liferay, Licensor, not Liferay, is solely responsible for the Software and the content thereof.



5. Is it really complex to clearly specify a plugin as "Free and Open Source" or "Free and Proprietary" or "Commercial and Open Source" or "Commercial and Proprietary"? I think that clarity is very important for professionals to be able to make proper business decisions. There is no doubt for example, that Liferay portal has two versions - A Free Community Edition as well as a Commercial Enterprise Edition. I think that the marketplace needs such clarity.


Free and Open Source
Which of the open source licences would be applicable? http://opensource.org/licenses for a comparison
Should a developer be able to opt for a specific licences.

After all I think you are right that different generic EULA's should help both developers(Licensor) and Licensee for clarity.
But it has nothing to do with the word "free" but with the licence agreement.
It would be good before you download a Plugin you could clearly see what generic EULA is in use.
Since Liferay is an open source project maybe you could start a Wiki page on such EULA's from which a developer could easily copy and paste this when publishing his/her Apps

Regards,
Corné
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Szymon Gołębiewski, modifié il y a 10 années.

RE: End User License Agreement DISCOURAGES download of some "Free" products

Regular Member Publications: 246 Date d'inscription: 08/06/09 Publications récentes
And here is interesting part that I want to discuss with you.

If I understand that right according to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleAlone IF that plugin is made for Liferay CE which is released under LGPL AND that plugin won't work without Liferay CE THEN this plugin should be released as LGPL.

And from that comes another sentence that allows you to take that code, change it and sell it:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic

Am I right?
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Corné Aussems, modifié il y a 10 années.

RE: End User License Agreement DISCOURAGES download of some "Free" products

Liferay Legend Publications: 1313 Date d'inscription: 03/10/06 Publications récentes
Szymon Gołębiewski:
And here is interesting part that I want to discuss with you.

If I understand that right according to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleAlone IF that plugin is made for Liferay CE which is released under LGPL AND that plugin won't work without Liferay CE THEN this plugin should be released as LGPL.

And from that comes another sentence that allows you to take that code, change it and sell it:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLRequireAvailabilityToPublic

Am I right?


I think you could look at it that way indeed, so you suggest i should only publish it as EE then emoticon
BTW most of our/my plugins are Hooks emoticon of jsp's that have annoying remarks

<%--
/**
 * Copyright (c) 2000-2012 Liferay, Inc. All rights reserved.
 *
 * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
 * the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free
 * Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option)
 * any later version.
 *
 * This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
 * ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
 * FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more
 * details.
 */
[code]
But i just want to be exempted from liability, you may choke on my code :cold: