The Industry choice

[Alex Martelli]

Roel Schroeven <rschroev_nospam_ml at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> Can you point to closed-source licenses that allow using the code *at
> all*?

As I recall, for example, Microsoft Visual C++ came with sources for
various libraries; all that the (closed-source) license for those
libraries forbade you from doing was to further distribute the _sources_
themselves.  You could do modifications big or small to those libraries
for whatever purposes, and redistribute the _compiled_ form of the code
as a DLL, or statically linked into your own programs, etc, etc.

Is this what you mean by "allow using the code *at all*"?  I think it's
a pretty common arrangement when the code being sold under closed-source
terms is a set of libraries, or a development system part of whose value
is a set of accompanying libraries.


Alex