Legal Bounds of Licensing...

V. Alex Brennen alexb at ufl.edu
Tue Sep 28 16:57:59 UTC 1999


Could anyone tell me which of the following would be legally
possible with a license in the US?

 - Restrict people from using the licensed code in programs
   which link with proprietary libraries
 - Restrict people from using the licensed code in programs
   which call services (through CORBA ORB, RMI etc) which
   are provided by proprietary code
 - Restrict people from using the licensed code in programs
   which work with closed protocols, specifications or APIs
 - Require that any content (data) produced by my program be
   distributed under my license
 - If the answer to the above is no, would it be yes if the
   produced content was a program and that program included
   source code generated dynamically by my program?  what if
   the source code was not generated dynamically, but came
   from a template which was part of the originally licensed
   code?

Basically, I have written an IDE for GNU/Linux which I'm
about to release. I would like to dual license it under
the GPL and a license which I will write. I would like the
second license to go to greater lengths than the GPL does
in it's effort to help make software free.  I am curious
what the legal bounds would be for the efforts of the second
license.

I would think that since a license is a contract, I can
set any conditions I wish.  However, I have been told by
other parties that this is not the case.  Thanks for any
help in clearing this up...

	- VAB



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