The Industry choice

[Roel Schroeven]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> Roel Schroeven <rschroev_nospam_ml at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Can you point to closed-source licenses that allow using the code *at
>>all*?
> 
> 
> As I recall, for example, Microsoft Visual C++ came with sources for
> various libraries; all that the (closed-source) license for those
> libraries forbade you from doing was to further distribute the _sources_
> themselves.  You could do modifications big or small to those libraries
> for whatever purposes, and redistribute the _compiled_ form of the code
> as a DLL, or statically linked into your own programs, etc, etc.
> 
> Is this what you mean by "allow using the code *at all*"?  I think it's
> a pretty common arrangement when the code being sold under closed-source
> terms is a set of libraries, or a development system part of whose value
> is a set of accompanying libraries.

OK, I've been bitten by my exageration. There are indeed special cases 
such as some libraries.

I was thinking more of end-user packages: if you somehow could lay your 
hands on the source code of Visual Studio itself, you're still not 
allowed to do anything with it.

-- 
"Codito ergo sum"
Roel Schroeven