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From: lsr@apple.UUCP (Larry Rosenstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MacApp Licensing Fee
Message-ID: <742@apple.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 10-May-87 20:06:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: apple.742
Posted: Sun May 10 20:06:21 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 11-May-87 04:02:20 EDT
References: <3113@sunybcs.UUCP> <174400030@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu> <727@apple.UUCP> <15309@brunix.UUCP>
Reply-To: lsr@apple.UUCP (Larry Rosenstein)
Organization: Advanced Technology Group, Apple Computer
Lines: 52

In article <15309@brunix.UUCP> omh@nancy.UUCP (Owen M. Hartnett) writes:
>
>As a commercial developer, and a purchaser of MacApp, there is *no way*
>I would ship a commercial package with MacApp because of its restrictive
>"licensing" agreement.  First off, this is an old argument which forward
>thinking companies like Aztec and Lightspeed have resolved in a 
>perfectly rational manner: They don't demand a fee for the *products*
>of their compiler.  True, MacApp is novel and it's object oriented
>languages are currently in vogue but that's no excuse for these
>restrictions and royalties.

The situations are not comparable.  MacApp is not the output of a compiler.
There is no license required to distribute the output of the MPW compilers.

MacApp is several thousand lines of code that becomes part of your
application.  It represents a significant investment on Apple's part (more
than 6 man-years or engineering).  The only comparable thing would be the
runtime libraries that 3rd party language vendors provide.  These libraries
are trivial compared to MacApp, and anyone could duplicate them in a few
days.

>Some might feel that Apple is justified because a great deal of the object
>code is generated from Apple written source code.  The same argument 
>might be made of any compiler.  After all, what is a compiler?  A tool
>to generate object code.  What is the only thing MacApp can be used for?
>Generating object code.  Whether I can code:

MacApp does not generate object code!  It is the source code of a complete
Macintosh program.  A compiler doesn't generate object code out of thin air.

>Why does Apple require a license?  Obviously, to protect their user
>interface from infringement.

No.  It's to protect the intellectual property and investment that MacApp
represents.  Its to protect against someone porting MacApp to other
machines.  The user interface is protected by copyrights, which is entirely
separate.

If the cost of the license bothers you, look at it in terms of the time you
save in implementing your application.  $100 represents about 1/2 day's work
by a competent programmer.  


-- 
Larry Rosenstein

Object Specialist
Apple Computer

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