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Subject:Re. Archiving on CD From:Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> Date:Thu, 29 Jun 1995 16:06:36 LCL
Arlen Walker commented on my proposal to archive old reports (and the
software that produced them) on CD. In response to his comments, two
elaborations:
1. As Arlen notes, read your licence carefully. Your particular
software company may indeed prohibit keeping multiple copies of the
software around (e.g., the original floppies PLUS the CD). As for
destroying old versions of the software when you upgrade, I highly
doubt that such a provision would be legally enforcable. More to the
point, unless your order form for an upgrade contains such a provision
in clear, explicit, plainly obvious language, the developer won't have
much luck prosecuting your for keeping the old version lying around.
I've never destroyed old versions, and often keep diskettes lying
around for several years, but I'm a packrat.
2. Arlen also noted that my comment "even if they could catch you"
might suggest "it's OK if you don't get caught". Mea culpa. (i.e.,
Don't blame Richard, he was just quoting me!) What I meant to
emphasize was that most developers won't waste time looking for people
who make backup copies of software, since this would be a
prohibitively difficult task. The people they're out to catch are the
ones who illegally copy and distribute software, and those who buy one
copy for multiple users without buying a multi-user licence, and
that's the intent of most licencing agreements. Can you imagine the
publicity disaster if any company sued a user for making a backup copy
of their software? Can you imagine Microsoft sueing Novell for letting
customers backup their network servers (plus any included MS software)
to tape? I can, but it would only happen once!
Good points, Arlen, and well worth a clarification.
--Geoff Hart #8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of
our reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.
