On 8/31/07, Robert <samnis@...> wrote:
> I was going to d/l the OMPL editor, but then I noticed it's for
> evaluation only. Does that mean the author could decide to charge me
> for it tomorrow and I'd either have to stop using it or pay him? That
> doesn't sound very fun.
>

I'm not sure what the meaning of evaluation only means. It could mean
that there is no guarantee of support.

On the other hand, the OPML Editor, and the kernel on which it is
based (Frontier), are both open source under the GNU General Public
License (GPL). This means that it falls in to the same legal category
as Linux, Emacs and Ruby. You are at as much risk of Linus Torvalds
pulling support for Linux as you are Dave pulling support for the OPML
Editor.

That is to say, it is feasible that Dave could pull support for the
OPML Editor, but (a) it would serve little purpose, as it is GPL
licensed and could be adopted by the community, and (b) Dave has shown
no inclination to.

Even if this unlikely event happened, OPML is a publicly documented
standard with an open XML format. There are a variety of tools that
can read and write OPML both as a 'feed container' and as an outline
format (and, as it's XML, you could edit it by hand if all else
fails).

It really isn't somethign to worry about.

Yours,

--
Tom Morris
http://tommorris.org/