Scary License

[mario]

Your license agreement is a bit too scary for us to sign on. In particular, these clauses …

4.
Confidentiality. You agree that the Software and any other materials provided by Laszlo which are marked as confidential or proprietary (the "Proprietary Information") are the confidential or proprietary information of Laszlo. You shall hold in confidence and protect, and shall not use (except as expressly authorized by this Agreement) or disclose, Proprietary Information unless such Proprietary Information becomes part of the public domain without breach of this Agreement by you, your officers, directors, employees or agents. You shall limit access to the Software to your employees and consultants having a need for such access and who enter into written confidentially obligations at least as protective of Laszlo as those set forth in this Agreement.

5.
Equitable Relief. You acknowledge and agree that due to the unique nature of Laszlo's Proprietary Information, there can be no adequate remedy at law for any breach of your obligations hereunder, that any such breach may allow you or third parties to unfairly compete with Laszlo resulting in irreparable harm to Laszlo, and therefore, that upon any such breach or threat thereof, Laszlo shall be entitled to injunctions and other appropriate equitable relief in addition to whatever remedies it may have at law.

Which are completely disproportionate to your commitments of:

IN NO EVENT WILL LASZLO'S LIABILITY TO YOU UNDER THIS AGREEMENT EXCEED $100 IN THE AGGREGATE.

Given that it is entirely possible this product may not become real, our liability is scary. For a new product/technology offering, it does not attract.

The most worrisome aspect of this sort of license is that we won’t know what is Proprietary or Confidential until we’re knee deep. We suggest your legal department lighten up a bit and that you show more confidence in your offering.

Lastly, we think you have a great concept and at least from the outside, your product looks COOL. Hopefully, we can give it a try at some point.

Mario Pintaric
President (www.robjects.com)
mario@robjects.com

[antun]

Hey mario

I'm afraid I'm not really a legal buff, and I'm not sure how Laszlo's EULA differs from other EULAs (personally I thought it was all boilerplate), but if you don't want to install the LPS, then why not use the XML editing feature to play with LZX:

http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps-v1/examples/animation.lzx?lzt=filter&filter=/LZViewer

One other thing - what do you mean by:


Given that it is entirely possible this product may not become real

-Antun

[mario]

Originally posted by antun
Hey mario

I'm afraid I'm not really a legal buff, and I'm not sure how Laszlo's EULA differs from other EULAs (personally I thought it was all boilerplate), but if you don't want to install the LPS, then why not use the XML editing feature to play with LZX:

http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps-v1/examples/animation.lzx?lzt=filter&filter=/LZViewer

One other thing - what do you mean by:



-Antun

The "Proprietary" bits are boilerplate, but the sort of things you require of a prospective employee not a user/developer of your product. Who are we working for when using this tool?

If you examine the license carefully, you will notice that it suggests the product might never actually be released, or be released in substantially different form. That's fine given that the company and product are still being evolved. What's out of whack is the burden of liabilities. You as the developer/user potentially have the same liability as an employee of the company, yet you're not getting the standard compensation (a wage). In fact, the most you can expect is $100.00 USD for your troubles.

Clearly, that's not what the company intends, but it could happen that you start on a track of related developments, or presently have like components and are sued for a bazillion dollars and must then prove that you had these ideas/technologies/methods before ever entering into this agreement.

Even if you know where you stand, who needs the hassle of even having to contemplate this kind of prospect.

[antun]

The LPS has been released. We launched a version primarily aimed at developers in February, and the official v1 release was last month.

The only difference between the downloadable edition and the edition you deply on is that the downloadable one only supports two IP addresses (i.e. it's for development).

I'll certainly forward your comments to the legal people, but if you're considering deploying a Laszlo app, you should definately voice your concerns over the EULA with sales (sales@laszlosystems.com). Like I said I'm not a legal person, but you may be able to get the terms you want if you talk to the right people. The LPS is enterprise-class software after all, and we do our best to cater to individual needs.

-Antun