>I have also called Mosaic Communications and received a $99 quote
>for a copy.
>
>Does free mean:
>
>a) free to anyone who can download it from an approved mirror site.
>b) free to anyone who can download it from a site where it was posted
> so that people could get better access?
>c) free for home/education use but it will cost for a company to
> use it internally.
>d) free to everyone for an acceptible evaluation period, but then
> it should be registered and paid for by everone or just
> some people?
My understanding and I am NOT speaking from an official positions is
that it is free for "personal use". That would make A & B true,
C true if it is a corporate policy decision, and d always false.
A company which decides to use Netscape as the basis for a CWIS needs
to get a licsense. However, _individuals_ within the organization can
use it for free. With this in mind, my understanding of the distribution
restrictions is to prevent one corporate Sysop from downloading a copy
and installing it on 10,000 corporate PCs. This is no longer personal
use. If each of those PC users downloaded their own copy that would
be cool.
Again, I'm sure that our lawyers will claim that I am oversimplifing
the agreement but we are basically just trying to be fair. If people
are just using Netscape to cruise the Web for fun we don't want anything.
If a company uses Netscape as part of the corporate infrastructure
than it is reasonable to expect them to pay for it. It is also basically
inevitable because by paying for it they will receive the support that
they are going to want if they are basing their CWIS on the product...
AGAIN: This is simply my understanding of how the legalese translates
into English. It isn't an official policy statement...
-Jon