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Chip Casanave
10-Jan-2007, 04:52 PM
Below...

-----Original Message-----
From: Wil van Antwerpen [mailto:info@antwise.com]
Posted At: Thursday, January 04, 2007 3:49 PM
Posted To: product-direction
Conversation: About the 'Personal Edition'
Subject: Re: About the 'Personal Edition'


LOL

"Business USE is prohibited"

Yep... that makes it useless. Even if you give your software away you
cannot write it in VDF personal as you NEVER will know if someone will
use it in a business. (publish on the interweb anyone?) The license
itself says that DAW can hold you responsible for your users... so ..
"You are responsible for the provision of the correctly licensed Client
Engines with Your Application Software."

[CLC] The quoted text above refers only to the developer's
responsibility to provide the proper Client Engine.

As for the NAG screen i think it's a bad idea. If someone writes
horrible looking software that doesn't really work well but used VDF PE
to write it, then it is perceived that you use VDF PE for writing bad
software.

[CLC] And, if someone writes +great+ software with VDF? Let's at least
have a little balance in the discussion!

Thanks but no thanks.

In its current revision i will advice people NOT to use it.

It's a pity though as vanilla VDF12 itself is nice and i'm glad i can
use that.

--
Wil

Mark Rutherford wrote:
> Ok, I have concluded that this is nothing more than a glorified trial
> version.
>
> IMHO, DAW, you guys need to call this a demo, not a personal edition.
> The 'Personal' term is already used for free IDEs like Visual
> Studio/Borland products that don't exactly have the severe limitations

> that this does. They have very few, as a matter of fact.
>
> The wording alone in the license, and the text on the splash screen
> that gets thrown up, pretty much nuke the idea of freeware being
> developed, because the license and the wording on the splash screen
> pretty much forbid it.
>
> See attached screenshot of the nag screen.
> Nice try, but I think you might need to refine this a little bit.
> I think your target audience is existing devs, not new ones.
> I cannot get anyone I know to use this, let alone try it - the license

> was, and I do quote 'draconian' and 'Worse than Microsoft's'
>
> (Uninistalling this 'glorified demo' as I write this...)
>
> Thanks for the effort for at least the commercial version - this
> doesn't hack it as a personal edition. Not even close.
>
>
> Mark Rutherford wrote:
>> I have a lot of questions about this new 'Personal Edition' and
>> hopefully we will get someone from DAW to chime in here (hopefully..)
>>
>> I see the personal edition as a step in the right direction, however
>> I am baffled by some things...
>>
>> First, the direction that this is going?
>> The personal edition is not really geared towards anyone that wants
>> to create freeware applications because... it needs a runtime that
>> has to be registered, etc etc.
>>
>> Just on this issue alone... Delphi, Visual Studio Express and such
>> totally kill this product.
>> I do have the personal edition, and it is fine for me, personally -
>> but anything I do freeware I cannot redistribute.
>> So, it is not so personal, or free.
>>
>> The next realm is the webapp part.
>> It has limited numbers of connections.....
>> So, at first glance... again, PHP and friends kill this portion.
>>
>> So, was the 'Personal Edition' created in order to try to get into
>> the enthusiast market of people like me that end up buying Visual
Studio?
>> To be honest, I don't get it....
>> It cannot compete because I will end up with Delphi or Visual studio
>> in the end, anyway. (Both of which I have bought...)
>>
>> If there was an edition that did not impose the sanctions that this
>> does, or the severe limitations, it might generate some buzz with the

>> freeware guys that -DO- buy these products.
>>
>> The ways that *I* see to fix this:
>> 1. The # of connections to the webapp server has to be raised a lot
>> higher for people that make free websites to use this.
>> Currently PHP/MySQL has this market won over because there are no
>> such restrictions.
>>
>> 2. The runtime has to be allowed to be distributed with a free
>> application, and has to be handled in the background in the
>> installation someplace.
>> Microsoft allows this, so does Borland, etc..
>>
>> I know that DAW cannot influence the runtime to end up on end users'
>> machines like Microsoft can with .NET - but if it was a hassle free
>> installation like .NET that would be a plus.
>>
>> So, In the end what is the direction that DAW is going with this
product?
>> Currently it appears to only cater to current developers.
>>
>> I would call this the 'VDF Personal - yet crippled Edition', since
>> the freeware guys are completely cut out of the pie.
>>
>> If this is not the intended target, ok.
>> But calling it a 'Personal Edition' kinda implies that it is allowed.
>>
>>
>> Basically what I am saying is that there are too many hoops and
>> layers for a freeware application developer to jump thru.
>>
>> I have told some developers I know that use Delphi, or Visual Studio,

>> etc to try this out, and these are some of the things that came back
>> to me.
>> The current product cannot possibly draw Delphi/Visual Studio guys to

>> use it.
>>
>> So, comments from DAW? Anyone else?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
>

wila
16-Jan-2007, 05:34 AM
Chip,

comments in text..
Chip Casanave wrote:
> Below...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wil van Antwerpen [mailto:info@antwise.com]
> Posted At: Thursday, January 04, 2007 3:49 PM
> Posted To: product-direction
> Conversation: About the 'Personal Edition'
> Subject: Re: About the 'Personal Edition'
>
>
> LOL
>
> "Business USE is prohibited"
>
> Yep... that makes it useless. Even if you give your software away you
> cannot write it in VDF personal as you NEVER will know if someone will
> use it in a business. (publish on the interweb anyone?) The license
> itself says that DAW can hold you responsible for your users... so ..
> "You are responsible for the provision of the correctly licensed Client
> Engines with Your Application Software."
>
> [CLC] The quoted text above refers only to the developer's
> responsibility to provide the proper Client Engine.
[wil] If you logically take that text and add it up with the text in the
splash i think that it means that i'm to be held responsible for my
"clients" even if i release my software for free as a download on the
internet. This is not hypothetical anymore as a developer just did that.
So... if someone uses RoloFLEX in a business on a VDF PE license then
Peter Donovan is in problems?
That's a bit unreasonable isn't it? IMHO it's the responsibility of the
client and not the developers. Or am i still misunderstanding the
implications of the text above?

>
> As for the NAG screen i think it's a bad idea. If someone writes
> horrible looking software that doesn't really work well but used VDF PE
> to write it, then it is perceived that you use VDF PE for writing bad
> software.
>
> [CLC] And, if someone writes +great+ software with VDF? Let's at least
> have a little balance in the discussion!
[wil] I'm just saying that i dislike the NAG screen, again it's your
choice. In addition i think that the text on there "prohibited in
business use" will scare away any free software developers that wanted
to use it.

As for the bad versus great looking software.
It's a general concept that free software is not as polished... i
certainly don't agree with that, but used it for the sake of argument.

But -let's face it- if you're ONLY allowed to work on it in your free
time (not sponsored in any way) then it's pretty likely that the User
Interface is not the first priority.

--
Wil

Oliver Nelson
19-Jan-2007, 12:18 PM
> Yep... that makes it useless. Even if you give your software away you
> cannot write it in VDF personal as you NEVER will know if someone will
> use it in a business. (publish on the interweb anyone?) The license
> itself says that DAW can hold you responsible for your users... so ..
> "You are responsible for the provision of the correctly licensed Client
> Engines with Your Application Software."
>
> [CLC] The quoted text above refers only to the developer's
> responsibility to provide the proper Client Engine.

Chip,

So I think here are the questions that will make it "useful" for me (all
somewhat laughable if you ask me):

1. Does the not for business use mean: "You can't make freeware that is
intended to be used by businesses" OR does it mean: "You can't make
software from which you intend to receive revenue or which wholly
complements other software from which you receive revenue" (IOW I can't
write a utility for my software released under this license to avoid
client licensing in some way) or maybe it means both... (BTW if you
like my terminology you can license if from me...I call it 'freetext')

2. If we work this out...IOW figure out clearly exactly what DAW's
INTENT is with the license...will you consider revising the license
(which I understand will have costs associated with it for you...damn
lawyers) to clarify this or do we all have to save a copy of this NG
thread for future reference?

OLIVER

Chip Casanave
27-Jan-2007, 03:31 PM
Oliver - notes below...

-----Original Message-----
From: Oliver Nelson [mailto:oliver@ootbc.com]
Posted At: Friday, January 19, 2007 12:19 PM
Posted To: product-direction
Conversation: About the 'Personal Edition'
Subject: Re: About the 'Personal Edition'


> Yep... that makes it useless. Even if you give your software away you
> cannot write it in VDF personal as you NEVER will know if someone will

> use it in a business. (publish on the interweb anyone?) The license
> itself says that DAW can hold you responsible for your users... so ..
> "You are responsible for the provision of the correctly licensed
> Client Engines with Your Application Software."
>
> [CLC] The quoted text above refers only to the developer's
> responsibility to provide the proper Client Engine.

Chip,

So I think here are the questions that will make it "useful" for me (all
somewhat laughable if you ask me):

1. Does the not for business use mean: "You can't make freeware that is
intended to be used by businesses" OR does it mean: "You can't make
software from which you intend to receive revenue or which wholly
complements other software from which you receive revenue" (IOW I can't
write a utility for my software released under this license to avoid
client licensing in some way) or maybe it means both... (BTW if you
like my terminology you can license if from me...I call it 'freetext')
[CLC] Regardless of the mechanism, anything that is "released under this
license to avoid [commercial] client licensing in some way" is NOT
allowed. Also, your example of connecting of an application originating
in Personal with your commercial application doesn't fly either because
the user is almost certainly a business.

2. If we work this out...IOW figure out clearly exactly what DAW's
INTENT is with the license...will you consider revising the license
(which I understand will have costs associated with it for you...damn
lawyers) to clarify this or do we all have to save a copy of this NG
thread for future reference?
[CLC] We are open to license revisions that provide clarification.

OLIVER