From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jan 23 19:49:06 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id TAA15386 for questions-outgoing; Tue, 23 Jan 1996 19:49:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id TAA15360 for ; Tue, 23 Jan 1996 19:48:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from msmith@localhost by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.6.12/8.6.9) id OAA25549; Wed, 24 Jan 1996 14:26:32 +1030 From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199601240356.OAA25549@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: Licensing and liability issues for commercial development To: mathezer@newera.ab.ca (Stephen Mathezer) Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 14:26:32 +1030 (CST) Cc: questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Stephen Mathezer" at Jan 23, 96 11:01:22 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk Stephen Mathezer stands accused of saying: > > What if we write software to back up a FreeBSD machine and it gets lost > due to a FreeBSD bug? How can we cover our butts in this situation? Hmm, what gets lost? The software or the backup? > The Gcc license stipulates that for software compiled with gcc, object > must be made freely available. We don't really want to do that. Plus, > what happens if gcc tightens the license further? I'm quite certain that the Gcc license does _NOT_ stipulate that. If it _does_, dBase for Unix is free software 8) > Basically I'm just curious as to how people out there handle these > issues because we are getting more and more requests to support the free > Unices and are currently refusing them all because of the above > concerns. This is a shame because we use our product in house on FreeBSD > machines and I personally am a fan and run FreeBSD at home but we can't > see a way to support it commercially. I must admit I can't see your problem there. You may want to support a given set of standard releases of FreeBSD, ie. you state that your software is known to work and is supported for versions a,b and c and if a user complains that it doesn't work under version d then you point them at the conspicuous message in your documentation/promo lit that points this out. This is the only issue that I could see as a problem. > -Steve -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] "Who does BSD?" "We do Chucky, we do." [[