I have a licensing question that nobody here can answer exactly:
We are writing add-on tools for other people that use these tools in their applications.
We would like to use a redistributable DLL from Microsoft (here: vcomp110.dll, but it could be the MFC or such, there's no difference AFAIK) in our code. This DLL is in the list of "redistributables" of Visual Studio 2012 Premium that we use.
As our customers themselves sell their application with our add-on(s), they need to redistribute this DLL too as our tool needs it.
a) The only sentence in the license text I see for that case is "Third Party Distribution. You may permit distributors of your programs to copy and distribute the Distributable Code as part of those programs." - but is such a person that bundles our tool with his application a "distributor"? What if he creates his application with a different development environment than Visual Studio?
b) The other case are the "redistribution restrictions". "You may not: alter any copyright, trademark or patent notice in the Distributable Code; ...". Thus we would need to add such a paragraph into our license terms regarding the MS redistributables?
I would think that MS wants people to be able to use their libraries also for such a case, but the terms are not clear enough for our legal department, they need an explicit statement.
We are writing add-on tools for other people that use these tools in their applications.
We would like to use a redistributable DLL from Microsoft (here: vcomp110.dll, but it could be the MFC or such, there's no difference AFAIK) in our code. This DLL is in the list of "redistributables" of Visual Studio 2012 Premium that we use.
As our customers themselves sell their application with our add-on(s), they need to redistribute this DLL too as our tool needs it.
a) The only sentence in the license text I see for that case is "Third Party Distribution. You may permit distributors of your programs to copy and distribute the Distributable Code as part of those programs." - but is such a person that bundles our tool with his application a "distributor"? What if he creates his application with a different development environment than Visual Studio?
b) The other case are the "redistribution restrictions". "You may not: alter any copyright, trademark or patent notice in the Distributable Code; ...". Thus we would need to add such a paragraph into our license terms regarding the MS redistributables?
I would think that MS wants people to be able to use their libraries also for such a case, but the terms are not clear enough for our legal department, they need an explicit statement.