Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Can anyone advise this developer on commercial licensing?
40hz:
My guess is that he uses components in his code that have restrictions on commercial use or redistribution.
-xtabber (November 18, 2014, 05:55 AM)
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That or components previously released under one of the 'open' licenses, which it looks like it does. That makes some people think they can't sell software incorporating them. (Point of information: you can. You're even encouraged to do so.)
I'm wondering if this isn't all just an extremely clever attempt to get hired by somebody. ;)
mmike:
Hi guys,
I'm the creator of that software.
The main liability threat I see are software patent claims.
I thought there would not be any issues when I just don't sell to the US, but during the preparations of founding a small company to sell my work I learned, that we have software patents in the EU and with this in Germany. Furthermore German law (I don't know about other countries) holds me responsilbe with all my **personal** belongings in case of (software) patent claims.
I don't know of any contrete patent my work violates, but research on software patents show, you cannot be sure and you should assume you just do violate some.
Well I do know, that the risk of getting sued in such a case is not very high, especially not in Germany today, but selling such a software means doing it for years and even if you stop the claims are valid for several more years. Looking at cases in the US I think it is just a matter of time, till we get those cases in the EU/Germany. Still down the road and not very likely, but I'm very risk-averse so I got out. (You cannot insure yourself against patent claims and a German GmbH (compare Limited in UK) doesn't protect you personally in such cases.)
That said, maybe open source is an option, but I'm not completey sure about patent claims there. Remember the patent threads against Linux some time ago? Furthermore it is quite a large project, financed completely by my own (I worked over a year on it full time, it is not just the wiki and it is build to be large: flexible document management, metadata, combined export, scripting, version control, source code interaction, license handling and dependency view generation are in parts implemented and not very far away) and I'm not sure if I would be happy to offer it for free.
I'm happy for input, on how others handle that situation and how I could release it without any liability risk.
Thank you very much.
peter.s:
Mike, you're right on all accounts. Let's gather some elements:
- You're speaking of Durchgriffshaftung, i.e. first of all, a German GmbH is 25.000 euro (about 30- or 31.000 bucks), which is way higher than corporations in other countries.
- Then, you can of course establish a Ltd., on cheap, in G.B., but both your revenu and that of the Ltd. will be subject to German taxes, if you then create a Ltd. & Co. KG with it or just have an official establishment in Germany with it, or even if you don't declare it to German authorities, which would be illegal.
- From the above, you see that the problem is not the form of incorporation, but the residence (here: Germany) of the managing director.
- The same applies to that Durchgriffshaftung (as you correctly state yourself): Wherever you incorporate your legal entity, and in whatever form, you are liable both by German law, and especially by German jurisdiction, which is the real problem here, since by German law (and contrary to the taxation issues), you would NOT be subjected to boundless, personal liability for non-German entities, but German judges like to hand over their non-State-paid compatriots to crooks worldwide on a silver platter, i.e. without legal foundations in the official texts, they illegally apply any text which pleases them anywhere by extension.
- This situation will certainly not improve by the imminent - and classified! - E.U.-U.S. commercial treaty: U.S. lawyers will specialize in pursuing European inventors (!) for alleged violations of U.S. "patents", the quotes being for the fact that in the U.S., you can file "patents" for anything, incl. both insignificancies and things that ain't even new - and European, especially German, judges will be eager to serve those U.S. vipers fully.
- The fact that there are almost no one-man developing shows inWestern Europe, and especially in Germany, is NOT due to the (inexistant) fact that European ain't as good in software as people from other countries, but at some time in their thinking process, they all face this same legal problem, and refrain from losing their very existence (and without their house, their wife, and their children, taken away by their wives).
- On the other hand, there are lots of one-man sw shows both in East Europe and in Russia, and also in the Far East, not by any "programming superiority" over there, but simply because Chinese judges will not eat the asses of U.S. crooks, as German judges would happily do, but laugh upon them, and the same would be true in Russia, whilst I'm not so sure anymore, for the future, for any E.U. country in Europe's east.
- Very often, you don't even will get the address of these Eastern developers, and they are right in withholding it.
- It's just SOME European developers who take the risks, and yes, they are taking big risks.
- You also will observe that a surprisingly share of (even rather tiny) German software venues are incorporated in (high-cost) Aktiengesellschaften (public holding companies), which in Germany is the only (and very expensive) way for avoiding total personal liability when being sued.
- The utmost obscenity in all this being the fact that your state of residence takes an incredible part of all your income, even for your sales in Nigeria, whilst then ruining you when some crook (even from Nigeria) comes and sues you in your own country.
- In my (West European) country, normal people pay 80 p.c. of their income to the state, whilst the real rich pay nothing, or then, 2 p.c. to the state of Luxemburg instead, as do some "international" corporations doing BIG business in Europe and especially Germany - when politicians are U.S. whores, that's what it all ends up to. Thus, the underlying problem is the fact that Europe is finished, with Germany being finished thrice, by the psychology of state-paid Germans. Well, it had been state-paid Germans who ran the camps, no? (Western) European governments systematically govern against their own people, and as for Germany, you see that phenomenon of the State, tenfold.
- In other words, incorporate your Ltd. or whatever in any exotic country of your choice: As long as you reside in a country that feeds its population to the wolves, both the taxman and any crook worldwide will tear you down where you live.
- Thus, some, very rare, West European software developers deploy other, exotic stratagems in order to avoid both liability, and taxes, but that means you shouldn't be enrolled any more in the population registry of some Western European shit country:
http://www.just-great-software.com/aboutjg.html :
"Jan Goyvaerts was born and raised in a town called Heist-op-den-Berg in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. Just Great Software was originally established there. Nowadays, Jan lives with his wife in Phuket in southern Thailand. Just Great Software's street address has moved with him. Still, Jan spends the larger part of his day in the global virtual world of the Internet, where his business thrives."
In other words, since getting a pen pal in some exotic country as your nominee / cover would be both insane and illegal, emigrate (perhaps, for a start, to Czechia (which is unknown to the spellchecker of this forum, which you can take as a good sign for getting away with "it": Or then, some day, pay with your life for YOUR OWN INVENTIONS and hand it all over to crooks, legally entitled by your own shit authorities which will have ransacked you all those fearful years before.
And beware, in this forum, there are unfortunately some people who happily take the side of governments - of governments of ANY mindset.
wraith808:
And beware, in this forum, there are unfortunately some people who happily take the side of governments - of governments of ANY mindset.
-peter.s (November 21, 2014, 03:53 PM)
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Where did you get this idea from? We support freely expressing whatever viewpoint you want to... this statement makes this a lot of advise tempered by unwarranted negativity. If anything, most here are anti-government control, or lean that way.
mouser:
Welcome to the site, mmike :up:
I have written in the past about my experience with an unscrupulous individual who tried to claim i infringed on a software patent that he applied for (and was actually inexplicably eventually awarded). This despite the fact that I had publicly released my fully working software years before he claimed to have had the idea. I did eventually prevail against the bully who was after me, but in researching software patent law I was disgusted and terrified by what I read... There is no real way to protect yourself from a worst-case irrational person with money to burn who thinks you are cutting into his profit margins.
My eventual conclusion was this: If you are the kind of person who is troubled by worst-case scenarios, you will be paralyzed by the possibility of being sued and will never engage in any activity except as an employee of a large corporation.
There is simply no way to protect yourself against the worst-case scenario of being sued. Neither logic, facts, nor understanding of the law can prevent someone from trying to ruin your life with a lawsuit.
The good news is that, as with most things in life, the worst-case scenarios are exceedingly rare.
Honestly the best advice I can give you is to not let the fear of a worst case maniac trying to sue you stop you from living a full life and moving ahead with your software. Living otherwise would be like never going outside for fear you will get hit by a truck full of sharks.
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