All Howard Butler wanted to do is write a GDAL driver for ArcSDE raster support. He couldn’t afford a production license of ArcSDE, but he took a look at ESRI’s EDN which is supposed to help people like him develop using ESRI Server tools. After looking at the fine print, he’s wondering if he can use it at all.
The problem is that I’m an independent developer, and I don’t have the financial resources to purchase a full ArcSDE seat (or have the ability to include it in the development of the driver, which would inflate the cost of development by nearly four times). Initially, I thought EDN had the potential to support development like this, but after reading the license, I’m not so sure.
My companies lawyers read the agreement and didn’t think any of it would constrict us, but everyone is different. Anyone from ESRI EDN (I’d ask Brian but he’s not at ESRI anymore) care to help Howard out?
7 responses so far ↓
1
Brian Flood
// Oct 12, 2006 at 7:58 am
When I began reading his post, my initial thought was that EDN was a perfect fit. However, he does make some good points that need clarification from ESRI.
IMO, it will get worked out in the end but if Howard finds out he cannot use EDN to do what he wants, then its completely worthless.
also, what’s up with the “posting of benchmarks” clause?!? I’ve seen this for beta and prerelease software but not for software that commerically available already.
ps - Howard - I would have left a comment on your blog but I could not figure out how to create and account…
2
hobu
// Oct 12, 2006 at 8:53 am
Brian,
I don’t allow comments on my weblog because I don’t really have the patience to deal with spam and trackback spam.
EDN *appears* to be intended for a developer like me, but after reading all of the legalese, it looks like it is intended more for a typical corporate developer where the corporation already has a number of licenses and EDN augments things to support “development.”
I don’t think it fits very well for a developer like me at this time. The documents never say if I’m ever released from the restrictions I’m signing up for. Big and scary agreements like this scare people away, which was the main point of my post. Don’t they *want* people developing cool things with, on, and for their software?
I think ESRI should look to the Oracle model with respect to development… here’s the software, download it, test it, build on it. When you come to actually put it to work, pay us (a lot).
Hopefully, someone with a linux shell account, the ArcSDE C API, and a database I can connect to with some raster data will contact me to support the development. Should be all I need.
3
Brian Flood
// Oct 12, 2006 at 9:04 am
hi Howard
blog spam - agreed. mine gets worse by the day, have thought about turning it off as well
as to EDN, you may be right about their target developer audience but its kinda infuriating that your situation was potentially not accounted for when the program was developed. To echo your point, don’t they “want” people to develope on top of their software?
oracle - agreed. Microsoft’s MSDN is nearly identical. (e.g. oh, you’re a developer? here’s all our software to build against. go to town and let us know when you’re ready to deploy)
Has anyone from ESRI contacted you about the specifics of the legalese? There might be some wiggle room in there, so don’t write off EDN yet…
also, is the C API distributable?
cheers
brian
4
hobu
// Oct 12, 2006 at 9:19 am
I met Clint Brown at the MetroGIS conference in Minneapolis this summer and discussed the need for making the ArcSDE C API freely downloadable and redistributable. I sent a follow-up email a couple of weeks after the conference, but didn’t hear a peep.
No one from ESRI has contacted me yet with respect to EDN. Maybe they’ll stumble across my post someday.
5
Mateusz Loskot
// Oct 13, 2006 at 6:52 am
Brian:
> Has anyone from ESRI contacted
> you about the specifics of the legalese?
Yesterday, I decided to provode some feedback on the ESRI Forums:
http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=2&f=1717&t=202724&mc=0
We will see.
6
Eleanor Davies
// Oct 16, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Just got forwarded info on this post & Howard’s orignial article. Unfortunately, I don’t know the answers to your questions but have forwarded them on to our product management & legal groups for comments/answers.
Eleanor Davies
ESRI Developer Resources
7 More ESRI Licensing Issues at James Fee GIS Blog // Dec 11, 2006 at 11:17 am
[...] Howard Butler had this problem back in October and now Paul Ramsey seems perplexed by the ESRI licensing agreement. I don’t believe we’ve heard anything back from the last time. If there is anything more confusing that ESRI licensing agreements, I’d like to see it. Our company is run by lawyers and they have trouble understanding some of the statements in the agreements. [...]
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