Which license to use for MFC based software?

[John Cowan]

Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. scripsit:

> The problem identified sounds less like a legal issue than it does a
> potential programmer's nightmare.

It's both.  You see, Microsoft (and all other proprietary software
companies I know) absolutely deny that you have any rights in their
software of any kind except those they are pleased to grant you,
because you are a mere licensee of "your" copy, not an owner thereof.
So if they want to say that you can only use their development tools,
or their libraries, to create proprietary-software, they can.  If their
EULA provides that you can only use the tools while standing on your head,
then that's what you have to do.

If you don't like these conditions, you can return the software for a
full refund, or at least so they say.

> I am assuming that Carsten bought a Microsoft IDE in some visual
> language, and in exchange Microsoft granted a royalty-free license
> for distribution of shared libraries.

Royalty-free but not unconditional.  Nor is his license to use the IDE
unconditional.

> I am not sure what the end-user has obtained in exchange for all of
> the additional conditions cited by a previous post.

The right to use the software, which the end-user would not otherwise
have.

-- 
John Cowan  jcowan at reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
Linguistics is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic
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philologists, psychologists, biologists and neurologists, along with
whatever blood can be got out of grammarians. - Russ Rymer
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