About
This site is all about licensing truths! And, as far as I can tell, it’s the only site in this form.
This initiative is a brainwave of Daniel Hesselink…me. For 13 odd years I’ve been sucking up all sorts of information in the licensing industry. I’ve worked (and still am working) with most common publishers, such as Microsoft, IBM, Symantec, Adobe, Oracle and alike. As such , I continuously run into interesting (and sometimes weird) licensing scenario’s. On this weblog I write about some business cases that me and my colleques run into while we do what we do.
Why do you put this information on the web for free?
I realize that this can be very valuable information to some clients. And I realize that many companies keep similar knowledge protected: Just to be able to add value to their propositions. Some will even ask your money for a ‘whitepaper’. Probably they’re afraid that if they tell the world what they know for free, they’ll lose their business. I think they’re wrong.
In the end, licensing comes down to compliancy and hard cash, no matter how you look at it. That’s what counts. But in most cases, it will take in-depth knowledge and a true licensing nerd to bring it down to these elements. Simply because there’s so much to it. There’s no enduser concidering to someone fulltime for this sort of thing. Simply because the endusers’ business is about other things, linke producing nuts and bolts, selling chemicals, producing energy, running a city, counry or continent. It doesn’t matter. The people running these companies don’t employ licensing nerds. If they need one, they’ll hire one.
What is the purpose of all this?
The purpose is to share information and ideas about software licensing. See it as an ‘open source’ project. All this site does it publishing licensing truths, for free. Everybody can join in and participate. To submit, improve, correct and comment. And yes, as a side-effect I’ll hopefully get some real cool licensing questions shot at me. Looking into answering these, will increase my knowlede (and the content of this site) further. But that’s a side-effect. The purpose is to share information.
What do publishers think about all this?
Basically we don’t know yet. Sure, sometimes an article may contain a sharp edge towards a software publisher (or…it’s licensing situation). If an article proves to be wrong by any means, anyone is invited to correct it. Including publishers. If you’re a publisher (or someone else for that matter) and disagree with a post, just contact us. It would be cool if this weblog can help improve any license agreement for any publisher, and make things more transparent for everybody.
Can visitors submit an article, or provide suggestions for an article?
Absolutely, please join! You may do so ‘incognito’ or under your own name. Feel free to use the contact form for this purpose. All requests and submits are considered strictly confidential, no matter who you work for or what you do. If you want to post on a more frequent basis, you can do so under your own account.