AT&T Source Code Agreement

[Stephen C. North]

I'd like to thank Bruce Perens, my intellectual property
attorney Ben Lee, and the participants in the mailing
list for working to fashion a license that benefits
all the parties involved.  We have released graphviz
under this license and shortly will distribute the
source for Montage, a generic ActiveX container object.

The process here really helped us to improve the license
in some important ways.  The ASCA seems very fair in
term of what you can do with the code and any patents
that may be involved, including profiting from the sale
of copies of the code, without virus- or dual-license
limitations.  I'm delighted it turned out this way.

In the future it would be reasonable to extend the OSD
to cover some of these areas (minimum rights to use the
code, patents, etc.) but as we gain experience in this
area we may also find ways to improve the ASCA.

Thanks again!

Stephen North
Information Visualization Research
AT&T Shannon Laboratory - Florham Park, NJ