I once heard that a license was originally sold for a nominal fee of one dollar. Was this the version 1 license? Or was that in another context?
That was what the newly-created ParcPlace paid to Xerox for the V2 rights in 1986, with Xerox retaining a non-exclusive license.
-C
At 12:56 PM 3/17/2003 -0800, Craig Latta wrote:
I once heard that a license was originally sold for a nominal fee of one dollar. Was this the version 1 license? Or was that in another context?
That was what the newly-created ParcPlace paid to Xerox for the V2
rights in 1986, with Xerox retaining a non-exclusive license.
-C
Right, the V1 license did not involve any fee or royalty.
Here is a cautionary tale that relates to ambiguous software licensing. In the early 90's, Instantiations (version 1) approached Tektronix about licensing some of the Tek Smalltalk technology. This was technology that was no longer used or of interest to Tek. The business decision makers were favorably inclined to license the technology to us. However, when the lawyers got involved, they realized that the only people who could attest to which IP belonged to Tektronix and which belonged to (or was derivative of) Xerox were all now employees of Instantiations. This made the deal too risky for them and it died.
Allen Wirfs-Brock
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org