On Thu, 14 Feb 2002 23:40:17 -0600
Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom <chrome at real-time.com> wrote:

> > I don't understand this.  If you buy a licensed product, in essence
> don't
> > you now own that particular copy of it and it's license?  
> 
> as I understand it, no.
> my understanding (and IANAL) is that software licences are covered by
> contract law, not property law. you don't *own* the software, you own a
> licence to use the software. this is how the software companies argue
> that
> you aren't allowed to take their software apart and find out how it
> works...
> it's not your property; it's their property.


Right, I knew that a license is purchased and we own the media that the
software came on (ie: disk, cd, tape, etc), along with the books.  In
other words, the physical parts of it.  The software is owned by the
manufacturer, it's their "intellect property" so to speak.  But my
argument still remains that if I decide to continue to use a known, good
product well beyond the point of it not being supported, I still don't see
that as constituting a license issue.  

If a software company were to pull all licenses for existing software that
was released prior to their currently marketed software, for no other
reason than to force companies to upgrade, I would see that as a bad
marketing move.  One would think that it would give people/companies
deciding to either upgrade or buy the software from said company a second
thought.

Maybe it's just me, but I always viewed software licenses as being nothing
more than an agreement that you won't:
1) Copy it for free/paid distribution without consent of software owners
2) Modify the code, unless it's allowed by the license for software user's
own use.
3) Install it on more machines than product licensed for.

That's kind of it in a nutshell.  As to the licenses being pulled, I also
thought that the license was pulled only when there was violations of the
license.  Maybe it's my naivity as to why I don't understand this, but
whatever happened to common sense?  Oh wait, there's lawyers.  One doesn't
need common sense with a lawyer.

Hmm, maybe I need to read a few sotware licenses...  Nah, too much
legalize.  


Shawn