Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdahl!fai!dalea
From: dalea@fai.UUCP (Dale M. Arends)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Registered Users
Summary: "Free" software
Keywords: free software, registered users
Message-ID: <1048@fai.UUCP>
Date: 2 Nov 88 23:50:25 GMT
References: <1036@fai.UUCP> <67044@felix.UUCP>
Reply-To: dalea@fai.UUCP (Dale M. Arends)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Distribution: na
Organization: Fujitsu America, Inc.
Lines: 35

In addition to this newsgroup, I cross posted my question to misc.legal.
Several persons, including one lawyer, responded.  The general thread of
responses were as follows:

The assumptions were that since the software was a commercial product that
was being distributed on a hard disk from a different manufacturer, the
support responsibility is determined by the granted distribution license.
In general, the most frequently encountered scenario is that the party
that is granted the license takes on the onus of support.  Any situation
that they cannot directly handle should be refered, by them, to the 
licensor and, once the answer is received, the licensee should then
respond to the purchaser (me).

These are the general terms.  Some companies prefer to maintain their own
support and write the distribution licenses to reflect that; usually at
a higher license cost to the licensee.  Should the grantor of the license 
find that the licensee is failing to maintain support to the extent that
the reputation of the licensor is damaged, the license may be revoked and,
unless prohibited in the license, legal action taken.

So, in my case, Jasmine apparently is supposed to maintain the support
functions for the SUM package distributed on their disks.

Thanks to those who responded.

Dale

-- 
		Dale M. Arends  (Fujitsu America Inc., San Jose, Calif.)
		dalea@fai.com
		dalea@fai.UUCP
		{amdahl, pyramid, sun, unisoft, uunet}!fai!dalea

The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
They are entirely my own if they make sense and I disavow them if they don't.