Frameworx license clause 3b

David Woolley forums at david-woolley.me.uk
Mon Oct 15 20:11:08 UTC 2007


Wilson, Andrew wrote:

> On non-commercial Value-Added Services, certainly.  An efficient-market
> theorist would say that whatever you can successfully charge for
> commercial Value-Added Services represents "fair market value,"

Without commenting on what the actual legal effect is, I very much doubt 
that this was the intended effect.  I also think that, whatever the case 
here, OSI should approve things that are intended not to comply, but 
literally comply.

I believe what they are trying to do here is to avoid the situation 
where one item is given nominally free, but something else is sold, with 
it, at an excessive price, to compensate.  There is a classic, possibly 
apocryphal, example, but I forget it.  However, a concrete example would 
be,"the software is free, but we charge USD 5,000 to put it onto a CD 
for you".

I think they want the charge to the USD 2 to 5 that an internet cafe 
might charge for copying a CD.

Put another way, I think they want prices to be set as though the 
software had no market value at all.

I believe that interpretation does breach the OSD!

(I think the rest of the quote from the licence is also about trying to 
forbid attempts to frustrate the intent of the licence.

-- 
David Woolley
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