Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!alberta!dvinci!news
From: reid@skorpio.Usask.ca (Irving Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: licensing agreements
Message-ID: <1989Dec26.212420.19786@dvinci.usask.ca>
Date: 26 Dec 89 21:24:20 GMT
References: <14956@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <9338@hoptoad.uucp> <9430@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: reid@skorpio.UUCP (Irving Reid)
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Lines: 22

In article <9430@spool.cs.wisc.edu> engber@thylacine.CS.WISC.EDU (Mike Engber) writes:
>I'm going to write a utility to be distributed along with a commercial
>product. Never having written a contract before, I could use some help
>writing the licensing agreement.

I know you wanted responses by e-mail, but this gives me a chance to
post something I've been intending to for some time...

Check out the "limited warranty" on Think C 4.0.  In an age where most
software is sold "as is", they warrant that their software will
operate "substantially as documented", and promise to correct either
the software or documentation or give you your money back if it
doesn't.  I've been suffering through a contract lately using a 4GL
that's buggy as hell, so I'm pretty sensitive about this sort of stuff.
Congratulations to Symantec for actually caring enough about software
quality to guarantee that their stuff really works.

On the other hand, they still have the bogus "opening this sealed
envelope acknowledges that you accept our license" language that I
really wish someone would take to court and have thrown out.

 - irving -  (reid@abraham.usask.ca)