University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy.
The Minnesota Gopher Team
misinformation, and rumor floating around that this note is being
written to address. Please treat this as an "official" University
of Minnesota Gopher Team position. We'll put this document up so
that anyone can get a copy before they howl.
In a time where we are having budgets slashed, it is impossible
to justify continued (increasing) resources being allocated to
Gopher development unless some good things result for
the University of Minnesota. This is a fact of life.
We can make a case that if you put up a gopher server that
makes useful information available to the Internet, then there
is more useful information available to the University of
Minnesota academic community also. Hence this is a Good Thing.
If on the other hand you put up a gopher server that is
commercial in nature and either inaccessible to the world or
containing information whose primary purpose is to MAKE YOU
MONEY, then we have a hard time making a case for our
admistrators supporting this. Indeed if you look at this
honestly, a licence fee is the right and proper thing to do.
Remember when UNIX was given away free?
How many of you are using UNIX now? It is licensed.
First, in the case of gopher servers run by higher education
or non-profit organizations offering information freely
accessible to the Internet, there is no change. No fees.
They just continue to use Gopher like they have always
done. If you fall under this category, please stop
and think about it. Nothing's changed.
In the case where gopher servers are being used internally
by commercial entities we think a license fee is right.
We don't know what amount of a fee is reasonable: so YOU
have to tell us and we need to negotiate on a case by case
basis. What is loose change for a large corporation may
be prohibitive for a small business. We'd like some
kind of sliding scale.
In the case of gopher servers offering information that is
sold, again we think a fee is reasonable and further that
it be some small fraction of your sales. Once more, we
need to negotiate a reasonable fraction on a case by case
basis. So comparing YOUR agreement with the one we make
with the guy next door might not be a fruitful thing to do.
Finally, there is the grey area where information on a
server run by a commercial entity is accessible to all.
Now having price-lists of your products (for example)
available, really is a direct benefit to you. On the
other hand, while having usefully compiled lists or indexed
journals may well be an indirect benefit to you (folks
will think well of your company and services) they have
a direct benefit to everyone. In these cases, we'd like
YOU to make a case arguing that the material on your
server falls into the second category, enabling us to
give you a license without a fee.
Yes, it may seem unfair that we get to decide whether
your commercial server should be given a license to use
our software without a charge.... but there it is.
We are not out to make big money here. We are simply
facing the realities of our environment and having to
justify how we spend OUR resources also.
The Internet Gopher protocol is documented and we're
also just about done with an informational RFC.
Folks can and have written clients and servers for
Gopher. You can also do it.
Before you go off and flame once more, ask yourself if
you want to get YOUR particular server going with as
little fuss and expense as possible... or if you just
want to stir up the soup. Then do what you wish.
We want to keep things working for all of you, and get
ourselves the okays from above to keep doing that.
If you want to be productive, talk to Shih Pau Yen;
he's the one with the power to do the deals. He
can be reached at
y...@boombox.micro.umn.edu
or (612) 624-8865
Please don't abuse the Gopher Development team :-)
- Yen and the Minnesota Gopher Team
Arnold Bloemer
>...
>Remember when UNIX was given away free?
>How many of you are using UNIX now? It is licensed.
Have you ever heard about LINUX ?
Linux development started with a very small unix kernel for PC's
written and published by a finnish student (Linus Benedikt Torwald)
in September 1991. From then on many other internet users supported
his work and now there is a complete unix with network support, X11,
all GNU tools, Lisp, ... And Linux is very fast. And Linux has a very
fast growing community. Linux has the potential to get the biggest
market share for PC Unix. See the newsgroup comp.os.linux for details.
And Linux is given away free!
Arnold
---
Dipl.-Ing. Arnold Bloemer Universitaet Hannover
Institut fuer Theoretische Nachrichtentechnik
und Informationsverarbeitung
blo...@tnt.uni-hannover.de Appelstrasse 9A
fax: +49-511-762-5333 D-3000 Hannover 1
phone: +49-511-762-5320 Germany