Customer Support Tools. Distrubute?

[evilpacketmonkey]

I work for a software company doing tech support and at times the knowledge gap between support and the customer could/can be bridged by some automation tools. What is the policy for me (lowly tech support guy) making scripts (*.exe) and sending out to my customers?

"each copy should include all copyright and trademark notices, and shall be accompanied by a copy of this EULA. Copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT may be distributed as a standalone product or included with your own product" Cut and paste from the front page http://www.autoitscript.com/

In practical terms what does that mean? What exactly do I have to include with for example a RegDel.exe tool I made for a customer?

Not a lawyer and before out go to our mgmt chain and then to the lawyer I would like to understand what I am really getting us into?

Thanks!

Edited May 6, 2010 by evilpacketmonkey

[Bert]

I work for a software company doing tech support and at times the knowledge gap between support and the customer could/can be bridged by some automation tools. What is the policy for me (lowly tech support guy) making scripts (*.exe) and sending out to my customers?

"each copy should include all copyright and trademark notices, and shall be accompanied by a copy of this EULA. Copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT may be distributed as a standalone product or included with your own product" Cut and paste from the front page http://www.autoitscript.com/

In practical terms what does that mean? What exactly do I have to include with for example a RegDel.exe tool I made for a customer?

Not a lawyer and before out go to our mgmt chain and then to the lawyer I would like to understand what I am really getting us into?

Thanks!

In a nutshell (The way I understand it though if I'm wrong I would be happy to be corrected.) is you do not need to include the AutoIt EULA on your distributed compiled scripts. You may however want to include your own EULA in the software you distribute to cover things such as reverse engineering and to hold you harmless for a couple of examples.

[GEOSoft]

In a nutshell (The way I understand it though if I'm wrong I would be happy to be corrected.) is you do not need to include the AutoIt EULA on your distributed compiled scripts. You may however want to include your own EULA in the software you distribute to cover things such as reverse engineering and to hold you harmless for a couple of examples.

In an even smaller nutshell, it looks to me like the License has changed again since I last checked it and what you stated may now be incorrect. I'll have to call in the legal team to see where it stands now becuase I don't see anything in there about scripts (compiled or not) belonging to the author of said script. I will have to look at some of the old help files just to see when and what changes were made.

It's in the help file under License and it looks like you now have to include a copy of the EULA but I'm guessing it's up to Jon (or Valik?) to clarify that.

[Valik]

Why is this an issue? The following is clearly stated:

The definition of SOFTWARE PRODUCT does not includes any files generated by the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, such as compiled script files in the form of standalone executables.

So, if compiled scripts are not SOFTWARE PRODUCT you do not have to distribute them as if they were SOFTWARE PRODUCT.

Reading! It helps in understanding!

[GEOSoft]

Just old age. The mumbo jumbo of legalese had my head swimming.

Thanks for the clarification.