Subject:
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Non-commercial clause (was Re: License Intent )
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw
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Date:
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Sat, 5 Jun 2004 18:23:43 GMT
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Viewed:
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2772 times
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In lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw, Peter Howkins wrote:
> "Kevin L. Clague" wrote: • [snip]
> > This is a tough one Dan. Before becoming a member on the SteerCo, I never gave
> > licensing much thought, but I'm getting up to speed now.
> >
> > There are a number of issues about licensing as wel can tell by the many
> > conversations from the past and present.
> >
> > For me one of the big issues for me, Kevin Clague, citizen of the LDraw
> > community (not me as a member of SteerCo) is that licenses prevent people from
> > taking the library and making a lot of money and not having to give it back to
> > the people who did the work to put the library together.
>
> Is a non commercial clause part of the SteerCo's intent? It wasn't
> mentioned in the initial post or in Larry's update. Could you clarify for me?
>
> Discounting the use of rendered parts in commercial products, eg. Larry selling
> ldraw rendered instructions (which I think ought to definitely be allowed) there
> are a couple of issues regarding banning selling of the parts library.
>
> Imagine these scenarios
>
> 1) Natalie F Monkeyson [1], a respected member of the ldraw community has
> come up with a way to make money for a local charity. Natalie is creating a CD
> full of lego related programs and information and is selling it for 10 US
> dollars a time. Should the ldraw parts library be allowed to be distributed in
> this way?
>
> 2) Lionel H. Cheescake [1], a upcoming young programmer has set to work
> creating a new windows editor for making lego models. His program is highly
> regarded by the community and is considered a giant leap forward in usability
> and features. He decides to sell his program, it is distributed on CD with a
> copy of the ldraw parts library (perhaps modified under the terms of the
> license, eg. converted to DirectX meshes), it sells for 30 US dollars a copy.
> Should the ldraw parts library be allowed to be distributed in this way? Is
> the 30 dollar charge for the library or for Lionel's legendary program ?
>
> With a non-commercial clause it's very difficult to know where to draw the
> line. If it's monetary then inflation degrades it, if it's ethical (eg
> charity) then there is the constant issue of misinterpreting the rules. I'm
> interested in any ideals anyone has on this.
It is very hard to define what commerical vs. non-commercial use is
as the examples above demonstrate.
One of the best ways to ensure that part authors do not feel
"ripped off" is to ensure that the library is alwasys freely available.
This does not perclude people from selling it stand-alone or bundled
with other products; however, people are unlikely to pay large sums
of money for something which they can get essentially for free.
For example, I can attempt to sell you a cubic meter of air for $$,
but you are unlikely to purchase it since there are many other
cubic meters of air available for essentially free.
----
The more sticky problem that occurs is when somebody does
an "embrace and extend" strategy. For example, suppose I
take the LDraw.Org library and add surface normals for every
polygon. For many rendering algorithms, the surface normals
allow more efficient back-culling. As another example, suppose
somebody figures out how to add connection information to all
parts. Before you know it, everybody wants to use the embraced
and extended library, not the official LDraw.Org library. Again,
I see the way to ensure that this does not happen is for the
LDraw.Org Standards Committee to agressively keep pushing
the LDraw format forward so that everybody always wants to
use the official version.
My $.02,
-Wayne
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: License Intent
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| (...) Is a non commercial clause part of the SteerCo's intent? It wasn't mentioned in the initial post or in Larry's update. Could you clarify for me? Discounting the use of rendered parts in commercial products, eg. Larry selling ldraw rendered (...) (20 years ago, 4-Jun-04, to lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw)
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