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Using MUI in your own applications
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The following text describes the rules and caveats if you want to use
the MUI system in one of your applications. Please read the complete
document, following the rules are some paragraphs that try to give
reasons why things are handled this way.
Since the rules are different for freely distributable and commercial
applications, some definitions follow before we get started:
In this document, the term "freely distributable" refers to software
which is either really for free (costs nothing) or which lets the user
decide if he wants to pay. Some restrictions for not paying users
(better: enhancements for paying users) are acceptable, but the software
has to work even without paying. Freely distributable software is one of
public domain (not copyrighted), freeware (copyrighted but for free) or
shareware (copyrighted and requesting a rather low fee).
Every program that doesn't fit into the freely distributable group is
considered commercial. If you are unsure about the type of your
application, just ask.
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Freely Distributable Software
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Freely distributable software may use MUI for free, no special license
agreements are needed. However, redistributing parts of MUI (libraries,
classes, preferences) together with your application is neither allowed
nor necessary. Users of FD applications are usually enough experienced
to look out for the complete MUI package themselves. Not redistributing
MUI helps eliminating network traffic and keeps down archive size. If
you really feel that your application absolutely needs a MUI coming with
it, just contact me. I am sure we will find a solution.
The copyright information contained in all programs using MUI and the
accompanying documentation should state that this program uses MUI and
that MUI was written by Stefan Stuntz.
Freely distributable software should also contain some basic information
about MUI to help unexperienced users to find it and to make some little
advertisement for my system. You can either directly use the supplied
"ReadMe.mui" for this purpose or say something similiar with your own
words. If you really dislike the advertisement, I won't mind if you
remove the registration part from the readme file. But hey... you got
this fantastic MUI for free so why not help me making some money? :-)
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Commercial Software
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MUI within commercial software is not for free. Your company will have
to pay a licensing fee somewhere between US$ 50.- for very small and US$
500.- for very big applications. Usually, the price is calculated by
multiplying the suggested retail price of your product with a factor of
five, but this is only some kind of very rough example. Rather expensive
applications with probably very few customers (e.g. mailbox or other
"special purpose" software) will of course get other conditions. Also,
if you plan to use MUI for more applications, multi application licenses
are available. Just contact me and ask.
The license agreement will allow you to use the current and all
following versions of MUI with the current and all following versions of
your product. You will also get the rights to reproduce and redistribute
some of the files from the MUI distribution, including the master
library, the classes and the preferences program. Special commercial
versions of this preferences program without shareware reminders are
available on demand.
The copyright information contained in all programs using MUI and the
accompanying documentation should state that this program uses MUI and
that MUI is copyrighted by and reproduced under license from Stefan
Stuntz.
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Discussion
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First of all, these policies are not some kind of quick hack. I
considered lots of other possibilities and it took quite a long time for
me to decide. Please read the following paragraphs carefully, I hope you
will understand my reasons.
There are some main goals I wanted to reach:
- MUI shall become a standard in user interface generation on the Amiga.
I really want to see lots of products having powerful and flexible
GUIs that adapt to a users wishes. And I don't want to see hardcoded
topaz/8 applications on a 1280x1024 resolution making my eyes go crazy
anymore.
- MUI shall be used in all kinds of applications, regardless whether
they are distributed as Public Domain, Freeware, Giftware, Shareware,
Commercial Ware or whatever else.
- And... please excuse me... I want to make some money with MUI. :-)
First of all, if something wants to become a standard on the Amiga, the
public domain and freeware scene is the most important thing to
consider. There is a really huge number of programmers that work just
for fun, supplying all the little (and sometimes big) tools that make
our lifes easier. These people do a really great job and surely will
help keeping the Amiga alive for a long long time.
Of course I could have released MUI as a completely commercial product,
sold for a somewhat high price. Some companies might have bought it to
create some of their applications, but only very few public domain or
shareware programmers would have been willing to pay such a considerable
amount of money. And even if some of them would, MUI would never have
the chance to become a real standard. Besides this fact, I don't think
that it's a good idea to take money from people who spend their spare
time in writing public domain applications. If an application is for
free, the use of MUI has to be free too.
Since charging programmers is not what I wanted to do, the only way for
me to get some money out of MUI is to have the users of applications pay
for it. Well, in fact they are the ones who benefit from flexible and
configurable programs, charging them seems quite reasonable. Luckily,
there are a lot more users than programmers. This results in a very low
price which seems to be even more cheap if you consider that a single
registration allows configuration of all currently existing and all
future MUI applications.
Furthermore, I do not force people to register. Most other shareware
products allow some period of evaluation time after that one either has
to register or to delete the program. This is not true for MUI.
Registration is only necessary when some advanced configuration options
are wanted. If one feels he doesn't need fancy background patterns or
customized listview smoothing, he may perfectly use MUI applications
without registrating for MUI.
Distribution policies for commercial applications are kind of different.
If I see someone making real money with the aid of my work, it should be
easily understandable that I also want to get a little piece of that
cake. That's why the use of MUI is not for free in commercial programs.
My first ideas were to have some kind of percentage fee per sold
application but this would become uncontrollable and too complicated to
handle quite soon. So I decided to have a fixed license fee which's
amount depends on the size of the product. Thus, small and relatively
cheap programs with probably not too much financial profit will be able
to get a cheap MUI license whereas big products will have to pay a bit
more.
If you consider the licensing fee as too high, please think of how long
a programmer would work for some $100 and how long it would take him to
create a flexible and powerful user interface. Of course, building a
hard coded topaz/8 GUI with some of the available interface builders is
not that difficult either, but if that's what you want for your users,
why are you actually thinking about MUI?
I understand that it's nearly impossible to sell a commercial product
together with a MUI preferences program with some disabled options and
shareware reminders. Therefore, commercial licensees may get a special
stripped version of this tool which only contains the possible settings
of an unregistered MUI but doesn't contain any reminders or other stuff
unsuitable for commercial applications. I am also thinking of a system
that allows commercial programs to come with full featured preferences,
restricted only to the specific application. These application specific
prefs would probably be supplied as linkable code and could simply be
called with a "GUI Preferences" menu item for better integration.
I really hope that these policies will satisfy the requirements of both,
freeware authors and commercial companies and of course also of
application users. Currently, this seems to work quite well. Anyway, if
you have some other ideas or suggestions how things could be handled
better, feel free to tell me about them. I am always looking for new
ideas. But please keep in mind my main goals mentioned above since
I won't give up any of them.
Stefan Stuntz
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