Re: OpenG Serial drivers

[Michael A. <mic...@im...>]

Martin outlines a lot of good concerns below. NI's rep, Adam Sweet, said:=
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"The $395 NI-VISA license is only applicable if you are building your own h=
ardware and would like to use the NI-VISA layer."
... In the scenario where you have a LabVIEW VI or EXE talking on a built-i=
n serial port, NI allows the first 10 distributions for free and after that=
 we require a licensing fee.  We are about to change our licensing policy t=
o allow up to 100 distributions per application for free and after that req=
uire a license.
So the short story is that if you are an end-user or alliance member, this
is a non-issue and NI-VISA will continue to be free."
       =20
So what about if we are just trying to support a new application, to which =
anyone can connect serial (or VXI/GPIB, ie, VISA instruments) and we do not=
 manufacture hardware? And I second the issue with how do we maintain contr=
ol over how many copies are out there? With Open Source tools and applicati=
ons we obviously want there to be as many copies out in the wild as possibl=
e.

It seems to me that this scenario is exactly what NI was targeting when the=
y implemented NISLA clause 1.E. to try to limit applications that:

<PARAPHRASE>"replace, by themselves or *in combination with other component=
s* the software or [other NI tools]" </PARAPHRASE>

I guess the bottom line is that we need an open source serial and/or VISA a=
nd even if NI allows 100 (or 1000) copies that we still won't be out from u=
nderneath the licensing issues.

Mike Ashe

---- ope...@li... wrote:
>
> Hi Mark,
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> Mark Balla wrote:
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> > The Wisconsin User Group Steering comity Just recently ask our District
> > Sales Manager this NI Visa question.
> > He did some research and replied with this response.
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> [...]
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> > Today, our licensing policy DOES NOT require a customer to pay a licens=
ing
> > fee for NI-VISA if the deployment target contains NI hardware or softwa=
re
> > written using NI development software. In the scenario where you have a
> > LabVIEW VI or EXE talking on a built-in serial port, National Instrumen=
ts
> > allows the first 10 distributions for free and after that we require a
> > licensing fee.  We are about to change our licensing policy to allow up=
 to
> > 100 distributions per application for free and after that require a
> > license.
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> [...]
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> Oh  yes,  i  know  that,  but  have  you  read  the  licence
> agreements?  I only found that NI supplies different licence
> agreements  on  their  FTP  server, all targeting NI-VISA. I
> havn't  read  them  all, but up to now I did't find anything
> about 10 or 100 free installations.
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> For   me  it  is  actually  unclear
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> - which of the licence agreements have to be used (for which
> labview version or for which hardware or whatever).
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> - where the licence agreement is which correctly and clearly
> explains how many installations can be used.
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> -  how  a  developer  should be able to ensure that only the
> number of allowed installations ere exists in the world.
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> -  where  is  clearly  explained  under what circumstances a
> developer  can  distribute the VISA runtime installer. (only
> when creating an installer with LabVIEW7 as explained in one
> of the licences? - what is with LV 5, 6, 6.1 and 7.1?)
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> -  If  NI  changes  the  licencing  issue, whats about older
> versions/installations.
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> ...
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> I can understand NI, that they wants to mainly support their
> hardware  and  I also understand, that they would have a fee
> if  anyone  is  using  their  software  without  using their
> hardware.  That's  not the topic here - but we all have paid
> for  LabVIEW  and we all should be able to use the basics of
> our PC and operating system (which we also have paid for).
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> 73 de Martin, DL5NAH