This is the first week of my class in DPS909 and I am really excited to be in this Open Source class. For most of my time in BSD I have been limited to what assignments to do in each class and what to learn for tests and exams. All the course work and assignments had been chosen for us by the professor. But in this course we have been given the freedom to choose any project of our liking. I am really excited for the fact that instead of just hard core programming I can develop other skills like documentation. Understanding someones else program and documenting it, would be a challenge which really excites me. I am sure I am gonna have one hell of a semester this Fall.
For the first week we were given a task by our professor, David Humphrey, to comment on two different sets of software license agreements; one open source and one proprietary license. I choose to look over the iTunes as I was curious to know what I had agreed while downloading the iTunes software for my iPod. The other I chose was the open source BSD 2 Clause as I was curious to what is it all about as I have heard a lot about it previously.
Below are three points that struck me from iTunes license agreement.
1. This statement was taken from the license agreement,
“You understand by using any of the Services, you may encounter content that may be deemed offensive, indecent, or objectionable, which content mayor may not be identified as having explicit language. Nevertheless, you agree to use the Services at your sole risk that Apple shall have no liability to you for content that may be found to be offensive, indecent, or objectionable.”
My question is why would they use something in their content that might offend anyone? Instead of apologizing even if they did offend someone by mistake they come back and say they are not liable to it!
2. “Apple and its licensors reserve the right to change, suspend, remove, or disable access to any Services at any time without notice. In no event will Apple be liable for the removal of or disabling of access to any such Services. Apple may also impose limits on the use of or access to certain Services, in any case and without notice or liability.”
I really don’t agree with the above statement from license agreement, they should give out a fair warning before just disabling the Services. We are humans after all, they cant just gone on and disable services like that!
3. “This License if effective until terminated. Your rights under this license will terminate automatically without notice from Apple if you fail to comply with any term(s) of this License. Upon the termination of this License, you shall cease all use of the Apple Software and destroy all copies, full or partial, of the Apple Software. “
Okay I understand that Apple has as right to terminate licenses, but terminating the licenses without notice is not something that’s appropriate for the sole reason that people o make mistakes and for that they are given warnings but here they can terminate the license whenever they seem fit? In my thinking that is not acceptable.
As for open source BSD 2 Clause License agreement, there are no “boundaries” set as in the Apple Licenses. The only requirement is that you need to mention “As is” with the copyright information in your binary files.
Phew… that’s it for now but come back for more coming up next week.
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