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Joined: Feb 2015
Posts: 138
kap Offline OP
Vogon poet
OP Offline
Vogon poet
Joined: Feb 2015
Posts: 138
EULA is found here: https://www.mirc.com/eula.html

I'm reading section 2

Quote:

2. Restrictions

You may make copies of the Software and distribute such copies to anyone provided that you comply with all other terms in this Agreement.

You may make copies of the Software for backup and archival purposes provided that such copies contain all copyright and other proprietary notices included in the Software.

You may not sell, resell, license, sub-license, charge for, rent, lease, or loan the Software without prior written permission from the Company.

You may not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, repackage, modify, translate, or create derivative works of or based upon the Software, in whole or in part, except to the extent (if at all) expressly permitted by law.

You may not transfer or assign any of the licenses, rights, duties or obligations under this Agreement to any other individual or entity.


There are many (full)scripts bundled with mIRC.exe out there.

When it says:
Quote:

You may make copies of the Software and distribute such copies to anyone provided that you comply with all other terms in this Agreement.


Two questions:

Does that mean you are ONLY allowed to copy and distribute the mIRC installer?
When you bundle mIRC.exe with your script, is that understood to be repackaging?


GNU Terry Pratchett - Looking for a mIRC help channel -> Check #mircscripting @ irc.swiftirc.net
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 2,812
Hoopy frood
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Hoopy frood
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 2,812
The official, legal, answers to your questions are contained within the body of the license agreement you agreed to and quoted from.
You should consult a lawyer for any legal advice.
Answers you may receive on this forum are not necessary correct, legal interpretations, including these very statements and others that follow.
I am not a lawyer. I do not represent mIRC. My imagination may be speculative at best, and suspect on days ending in 'y'.

Originally Posted By: kap
Does that mean you are ONLY allowed to copy and distribute the mIRC installer?
When you bundle mIRC.exe with your script, is that understood to be repackaging?

From what I can gather, the mIRC installer (and other zip downloads) are software packages.
To modify the contents of these packages, or to include them inside of other packages, would be to repackage that software.

If you bundle mIRC.exe with your script, that would reasonably be understood to be repackaging, which would be disallowed.

( I won't say anything "is" or "isn't", because I don't have that authority. )

I interpret this to mean you are only allowed to copy and distribute mIRC in its original installer or zip package form, just as you received it, separate from any scripts that you also wish to distribute.

In practicality, these license provisions make good sense. My personal observations are:

* The author would not want to be held liable for harmful scripts that someone bundles and distributes with mIRC.
* He would not want poorly written scripts to tarnish the image, reputation and fitness of mIRC.
* He would not want users to be mislead into believing that a repackaged script bundle of mIRC is how mIRC normally looks or behaves.
* He wouldn't want a popular script-repackaged distribution of mIRC to become famous and overshadow the official, and updated, installer distribution.
* He wouldn't want a famous script to become synonymous with his trademark that he might be forced to share or lose his trade name to another entity.
* He wouldn't want mIRC to earn a negative reputation with antivirus / malware detection software or from information technology experts.

Historically, distributions of scripts that have been bundled with mIRC.exe are not kept up to date, are woefully out of date by 10 or 15 years, so they are now vulnerable to known bugs that expose the user to exploit. Many come included with modifications intended to suppress or circumvent the shareware registration process and deprive the author of potential customers. The scripts themselves, if not misguided and poorly written, are often malicious in nature, contain bugs, are exploitable. Users often become convinced that they cannot upgrade mIRC otherwise their [terrible] bundled scripts will break.

That said:

Perhaps (and I'm only guessing) you might be allowed to distribute an official mIRC package along side your script package, provided that the two are clearly distinguishable as independent works by independent authors, and that it takes manual instruction or informed consent of the user for the two works to be installed together on their machine.

The user must be allowed to install any mIRC distribution on its own, without installing your script, so they can use and experience mIRC as the author originally intended. The distribution must not be disguised or hidden in any way that might discourage or prevent a user from installing it by itself. A script or theme must not deceive the user into thinking the mIRC software they're using was written by a different author, under a different name or branding (-=[ZoMg ClaN ChAtZ]=-). And certainly, no script or distribution may surreptitiously install, replicate or hide mIRC on somebody's computer without their knowledge and fully informed consent.

It is easy to distribute your script independent of mIRC, just include some detailed instructions. Guide the user where to download the most up-to-date version of mIRC and explain how to unpack and load your script after they've got mIRC up and running. If you think this process may be too complicated, then create an installer package for your script using NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) or some other package installer. It might even be permissible (check with your lawyer) to have the same installer package offer to download and install the official mIRC distribution, and then offer to install your script right after.


TL;DR. When a user installs mIRC, they should NOT just automatically find themselves using your script, as this would be a modification or repackaging of the software, which would be disallowed. IANAL.


Well. At least I won lunch.
Good philosophy, see good in bad, I like!

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