I wrote the article Are These Reasonable Uses For a Single Node 500 User Confluence License after a comment from one of their employees indicated I couldn't really freely use the count of users they are trying to sell me a license for. Evidentially, their idea of their license is much more restrictive than the plain reading of "We're selling you one of something that you can use with a certain amount of capacity, don't clone copies of it." Borland called it software licensing "Like a book." One copy in use at a time in one place, just like a book can't be in two places to be read by two people at the same time.

Seeing a company clearly stating that you're licensing an installation of a given number of nodes, that will support a given number of users, and in one plain clause of their license telling you it doesn't matter what the relation is between the authorized users and yourself, and then in another obscure clause prohibiting certain relationships between you and those users (relationships that don't involve creating more installations, or defeating the licensed user count) one wonders what to believe. It creates fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

FUD doesn't lead to productive development, like the projects proposed at Bobsgear to enhance their product. Instead it leads to trying to spell out in great detail an example usage scenario to see would it meet the license. It's an exercise like the old "Would that then there be a sin Father?" kinds of stumper questions that boys like to ask in catechism class, and that lawyers like to spend $10's, or even 100's, of thousands of dollars of their client's money arguing in court.

Why do I care enough about a company and their software to spend an entire evening spelling out in great detail a usage scenario that the average person would think would be allowed? And writing an editorial about why they shouldn't undercut their resellers? It's because it's really good software. The pain of recreating it from scratch is above my threshhold.

But if the company wants to sell you a license to have an installation of their software with a bunch of users, but then place vague restrictions against how you use those users, and claim those restrictions stop you from doing the very thing (within your user count) that they are doing to compete against you, then it's like they are trying to sell you a car with a kill switch that they can activate if you dare to drive in a neighborhood they don't like. What rental company would buy cars from a automaker who tried to tell them which races they could, and could not, rent the cars to?

Open source software licensing was developed to prevent people from taking away your rights to use the software. It was developed to prevent lawyers from being able to play silly mind games of "the first clause giveth, and the tenth clause taketh away".

The pain of wondering whether you can get an honest answer that some lawyer won't second guess later, it makes developing your own software sound much less painful.