I’m currently tracking down license texts and interpreting them for a client. I’m not terribly surprised by, but certainly frustrated at, the lack of clarity in licenses in general. Additionally, things that you’d think would be easy to license and allow for redistribution – database drivers – are my current bugbear. Specifically, I’m trying to track down clarification on how our client might be allowed to redistribute IBM’s Informix JDBC driver. The license is about 12 printed pages with standard boilerplate text for every possible export case for multiple countries around the world. However, when it comes to explaining what you can actually *do* with the driver, there’s about 3 lines. You can
1. install it on one computer, and
2. pay more money if you want to install it on another computer.
That’s pretty much it. Calling up the number on the IBM Informix JDBC web page was pointless. They can transfer me over to ‘next level’ support, but only if I give all our client’s information over to them first before discussing what steps need to be taken to allow for redistribution.
I suspect that someone who might be reading this familiar with IBM might be rolling their eyes at my naivete at having thought I’d get any clarification by calling a number from a website. Fine – I admit, it was a longshot. However, the guy at the other end really didn’t even understand the question. It took three attempts at trying to explain to him what I wanted, and every attempt ended with him asking “So are you looking to buy something?”
I guess it’s too much to expect from a company as large as IBM to have any sort of understandable, uniform and coherent strategy for allowing redistribution of things like database drivers, or to publish information on directly contacting non-sales people from their site. Probably not something I could easily do with Microsoft or Sun (their licenses are probably the worst for ambiguity!) so it’s not specifically an IBM problem, they’re just first on my list today.
