In the proprietary software industry, an end-user license agreement or software license agreement is the contract between the licensor and purchaser, establishing the purchaser's right to use the software. The license may define ways under which the copy can be used, in addition to the automatic rights of the buyer including the first sale doctrine and 17 U.S.C. ยง 117 (freedom to use, archive, re-sale, and backup).
Many form contracts are only contained in digital form, and only presented to a user as a click-through where the user must "accept". As the user may not see the agreement until after he or she has already purchased the software, these documents may be contracts of adhesion.
Software companies often make special agreements with large businesses and government entities that include support contracts and specially drafted warranties.
Read more about End-user License Agreement: End-user License Agreement, Comparison With Free Software Licenses, Shrink-wrap and Click-wrap Licenses, Product Liability, Patent, Reverse Engineering, Enforceability of EULAs in The United States, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words license and/or agreement:
“It would much conduce to the public benefit, if, instead of discouraging free-thinking, there was erected in the midst of this free country a dianoetic academy, or seminary for free-thinkers, provided with retired chambers, and galleries, and shady walks and groves, where, after seven years spent in silence and meditation, a man might commence a genuine free-thinker, and from that time forward, have license to think what he pleased, and a badge to distinguish him from counterfeits.”
—George Berkeley (16851753)
“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)