Community license

[Labrador 0]

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with the license of the community edition.

The question is regarding if I make a program and release it under a permissive license as gpl for example, and my employer (that makes over US $5000 in revenue) would use it, would this be considered as a license breech?
Even if not intended, if they use the program they also benefit from it and this would automatically force me to purchase a license?

Any experience or insights on the matter is appreciated, I'm looking into learning Delphi / object pascal, but if this would be a issue it's probably best to go with Lazarus IDE instead?

Thanks,

[shineworld 73]

On the use of the community license, my advice is to be very careful about what you do.
I bring them my case.
At home, on my personal notebook I had installed the community version of Delphi, it was the Rio, to work on an open-source project, GLSCENE.

Since I have little time at home to develop I, unhappily, thought of taking advantage of the hour and a half of free time for lunch break I have at the office, to continue development on my personal notebook BUT attached to the company WIFI network to access the sources, do push and everything else.

Well after a month or so I got a tethered notification from Embarcadero, that according to their logs, Community sends logs of what files you compile, when you compile, what network and domain you are working on, my company was not using Community intebitually for application development while earning over 5000E. The email came directly to the company by going back to the company's internet domain data.

There was no way to make it clear, even after sending the project report I worked on, that it was not of company interest but personal, about it being my personal laptop, etc.

Moral of the story, they gave me a number of days to purchase the full Architect product (the most expensive formula) or legal action would start.

The company covered the cost, thankfully.

Be careful where you connect with terminals....
Since then never again a Community product and since I personally cannot buy Licensed products at those prices, I now participate in open-source projects with other environments and languages.
 

[Labrador 0]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer, this is sort of what I'm also afraid of.
That even if I use the IDE on my personal laptop and never connect it to the work network that there's some kind of telemetry on the distributed program that phones home to see if it's on any company network.
And if I release it as GPL or similar, I can't control who installs it or where.

So I guess that the Community Edition wouldn't be a good fit for developing programs that will be distributed?

Thanks,

[DelphiUdIT 176]

1 hour ago, Labrador said:

And if I release it as GPL or similar, I can't control who installs it or where.

It's not important where or how many people use the compiled project or sources. Important thing is that you don't get more then $5000 of revenue and you don't use at work the RAD IDE.

But this is not so simple to divide the revenue of your normal work from your use of RAD IDE.

 

So, except for students that normally don't have a big revenue , is really difficult to use the CE edition according with license.

 

Even just to test, try and look at the potential of the environment, it takes hundreds of hours of work with the IDE ... especially for an inexperienced user. Does Embarcadero consider this to be in compliance with the CE license?

 

Quoted from https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Community_Edition

 

Quote

...................

Both Delphi Community Edition and C++ Builder Community Edition are aimed towards casual developers, students, and early-stage startups that are starting to develop cross-platform apps.

Community Edition aims to make it easy to use Delphi and C++Builder, including learning the tools or starting to develop software with them, as well as assisting students and open-source developers.

...................

 

 

Edited May 19, 2023 by DelphiUdIT

[Labrador 0]

Hi,

As it states in section 10 of the community edition faq (https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq):

Quote

Yes, subject you don't install the Community Edition in your employer issued device and the use of the Community Edition doesn't benefit the company (i.e. your employer).

If any company would to install the compiled program made from community edition, they would per se benefit from it as I see it.
And therefore I would automatically have breached the license agreement?

 

I wish that they would consider a more flexible use of the compiled programs if it had a copyleft license (GPL, MIT and so on).

Since I'm new to the forum, I don't know if there's any representation from Embarcadero on the forum that we could get some insights from?

Thanks,

 

[programmerdelphi2k 237]

I think that Embarcadero's proposal is very flawed and misleading, due to the fact that it defines the tool as "intended for beginners, students, and not commercial use, or with a maximum revenue of $5000/year".
Let's see, the colleague above said that when connecting to the wifi network of the company he works for, he was caught and unequivocally accused of using the application developed with the CE edition, commercially, because the company where he works, is known and, supposedly, has an income greater than $5000/year.

Ok, so, here we have a clear privacy violation, the Embarcado tool, developed the application and, inadvertently, "embedded" a code outside the application, which, in a surreptitious way, sends data to its servers, however, only the data of use, but also personal information enabling the collection of private information, such as the IP identification, as well as the possible wifi network in use, which among many other information that goes beyond the minimum necessary to diagnose information about the software, can identify which company (in this case) is using an application that was developed by the CE edition.

 

I think it would be much clearer to explicitly ask the would-be user of your tool to complete a registration, with personal data, explicitly informing the purpose of use, and thus informing them of their respective responsibilities in court.

Anyway, Embarcadero sells an idea that in practice brings more misfortunes than benefits. She could simply put a "clear and explicit code of "NON-COMMERCIALIZABLE DEMO AND FOR A DETERMINED TIME OF USE" when the application was executed, making it very clear that the generated software will be only, and only, for the use of the developer. And, in the case of NGOs, there would be another type of exclusive use license for this purpose.

 

Complicated, but necessary so that there are no margins for another understanding!

As always, cheap is expensive! And, we must look into the teeth even of the horses given to us!

[Remy Lebeau 1393]

3 hours ago, shineworld said:

Since I have little time at home to develop I, unhappily, thought of taking advantage of the hour and a half of free time for lunch break I have at the office, to continue development on my personal notebook BUT attached to the company WIFI network to access the sources, do push and everything else.

Have you considered setting up a personal VPN on your home network, and then connect to it from your work office?

[programmerdelphi2k 237]

Now imagine the following:

• I, develop an application using an Embarcadero CE edition!
• I'm on my latest generation notebook, with an nVida 40xx video card, running my favorite online game, connected to a Microsoft public wifi (if any)... I'm there, killing all the opponents.... however, I forgot that on my notebook is my application created in an Embarcadero CE edition is running, because I was registering my favorite songs... and, suddenly, the Embarcadero servers are about to send a warning letter to Microsoft, because I I'm using their wifi network... what happens now? I don't have a VPN (and if I do, they can find me)...
• Does Microsoft get the letter or do I?

[Labrador 0]

From what I gather from the replies, it seems best not to use the community edition for any intent of distributing compiled programs to be on the safe side.
It's sad in a way, since the IDE seems to be a powerful tool with much potential and it would be a great way to attract new developers to the Delphi / Pascal language.

As it seems, the Pascal language has fallen somewhat out of grace the last years but as a newcomer to programming the Pascal syntax seems both structured and clear, and I will continue learning the language but it seems best not to use Delphi to do it with.

 

[DelphiUdIT 176]

5 minutes ago, Labrador said:

As it seems, the Pascal language has fallen somewhat out of grace the last years but as a newcomer to programming the Pascal syntax seems both structured and clear, and I will continue learning the language but it seems best not to use Delphi to do it with.

😍PASCAL is the best programming language in the world 😍 but Delphi CE is not the right product if you want to distribute your projects freely.

Behind Delphi there is a structure (now is Embarcadero / IDERA) which is not "non-profit" and which rightly must be rewarded for the work it does. Despite all the Delphi environment (overall) remains for me the best programming environment in Pascal and I use it as a job to be able to pay for it.

[Labrador 0]

Absolutely, I don't question that Embarcadero is a profitable company and must be able to pay wages to the developers and pay for hardware / infrastructure.
By all rights they are entitled to make a profit.

I just think that the community edition isn't really a good gateway into the Pascal language for newcomers due to the restricted license.
One could look at the QT framework for example, they utilize a dual license: commercial / open source.

For my part I'll never become a professional developer, I'll be a "weekend warrior" and code for fun and relaxation only so buying the e.g. professional edition to publish whatever I make as open source won't be a option.

 

[David Schwartz 426]

QUESTION: at your work, does your employer have ANY registered versions of Delphi? I'm guessing they DO, because otherwise EMBT would have no way of knowing you work for them. 

 

My opinion is because of THAT and because you used your PERSONAL computer for PERSONAL work and connected to YOUR EMPLOYER'S NETWORK ... you basically waved a big red flag in front of anybody who might be watching.

 

If you read your employment agreement, there's a very good chance that says anything you work on using COMPANY RESOURCES BELONGS TO THE COMPANY. In many states in America, this is part of a "non-compete agreement" and laws have been enacted that say if you work on something OUTSIDE of work, using YOUR OWN RESOURCES, on YOUR OWN TIME, then the fruits of your labors are YOURS and your employer has no claims on them. Otherwise, they belong to the company. But MOST states aren't that enlightened -- their non-compete agreements say that ANYTHING YOU WORK ON 24/7/365 BELONGS TO THEM!

So all EMBT needed to do was ask whether your non-compete agreement says that whatever you work on using any of their resources belongs to THEM or not. If so, you basically put your employer into their crosshairs from a legal standpoint. You used the CE version to write software that may have belonged to your employer right from the outset. Do you understand that?

 

Because by your admission, you DID use some COMPANY RESOURCES -- their INTERNET. And even though say you were "at lunch", it seems YOU WERE PHYSICALLY DOING THIS AT WORK (because you were connected to their internet), which can be construed to be "on company time" -- being "on break" is still tracked by the company while you're at work.

 

If, instead, you went to a local restaurant and accessed THEIR network, or used your phone as a WiFi Hotspot, there's not much room for anybody to claim your employer is in any way involved -- unless your non-compete agreement says that ANYTHING you work on IS THEIRS. 

 

The CE license DOES allow you to distribute programs compiled with the CE edition, right? For free or for a fee, right? So that's not the issue.

 

The issue is, what if your employer might be using it? Personally, I'd say you'd be skating on thin ice with that one, because maybe your employer has not renewed their maintenance agreement in years and is not interested in doing so. But if you build stuff "on your own" that actually is of benefit to your employer (and may actually belong to them), I'd say that's a very fishy situation and hard to defend. Sure, it's one thing if the company makes widgets and your app is for taking notes; you can argue, "So what?" But EMBT can argue that they might have had some role in encouraging you to do this to save them the license fee, right? Which may be why they paid for your Architect license -- because EMBT had threatened THEM with a much bigger lawsuit. They may have had no knowledge of your efforts, but ... how did they end up using the app you created??? 

 

See, that's the fishy part to me. Your actions might have been innocent, but there's just too much overlap between your actions, and who benefitted from them. You used company resources and they got a direct benefit by using your creation. That's really what it boils down to as far as I can tell. And you're probably lucky you didn't get fired.

 

I have worked plenty of places and worked on my own stuff independently, but that's the key -- INDEPENDENTLY. Meaning NOT AT WORK, NOT USING ANY COMPANY RESOURCES, and certainly NOT USING MY SOFTWARE AT PLACES WHERE I WORK. 

 

I don't know why people here are making up so much nonsense about this. EMBT wants the CE version to be used by people at home and at school to learn to build programs with Delphi. There are TONS of people who build lots open-source and free stuff and never make a dime from it. Maybe the company you work for does.

 

But if you get paid as a programmer, and you use the CE edition "at work, using company resources", I'd say there's about a 95% chance you and your employer are going to get found out, no matter how innocent you think your actions might be. To avoid that, talk with your boss, your IT manager (whomever manages your software licenses), and go over your employment agreement to find out what the exact requirements are for you to be able to work on your own projects at home independently from work. You might have to negotiate a separate non-compete agreement and/or disclose what you are or plan to be working on outside of work. 

 

And whatever you do, do NOT do it using ANY of your employer's resources -- like, don't even sit in your car in their parking lot at lunch time or park nearby at night after work just to use their internet! 

 

At the end of the day, this is not really about the CE license at all, but about keeping your personal life outside of work completely separate from your employer, their time, resources, and whatever your non-compete agreement says about this stuff.

 

Consider that the reason they have that $5000 earnings limit is they WANT you to make money with it! Because if you do, you'll probably want to make even MORE with it. And to do that, you can use SOME of your earnings to BUY A LICENSE, which removes the earnings cap and lets you make as much as you want. 

[shineworld 73]

Your argument lines up right doesn't make a dent.
In fact, beyond describing the reasons, we went no further and paid what was due.

At the company there are no constraints on what one does in one's free time between lunch breaks, and the company has been favorably disposed to those who devote that time to opensource projects that do not conflict with company business, so I have never had a problem collaborating with the Linux project (support embeded boards), or .net-based projects.

At the end of it all, I left the open world of Delphi and devote myself to other projects with Linux, FreePascal and .NET.
 

[DelphiUdIT 176]

2 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

My opinion is because of THAT and because you used your PERSONAL computer for PERSONAL work and connected to YOUR EMPLOYER'S NETWORK ... you basically waved a big red flag in front of anybody who might be watching. 

This discourse is absolutely misleading and meaningless. This is the problem with the CE license.
I report my case, i have a subscription active and I'm not licensed to use a CE:
I have a very wide "internet" band available and I have decided to share this resource in the neighborhood with students and other people who don't have economic possibilities (free of course).
Does this mean that whoever connects to my network works for me? What if some students use the CE? That's why I asked the students not to use CE (one of them actually wanted to learn Delphi but I directed him to Lazarus).

This is reality, not fantasy and many structures leave accessibility to the resources they have without there having to be an economic activity behind it.

 

Surely the Community Edition has its advantages, but the legal aspect is so stringent that those who want to approach this tool prefer other ways.

Bye

[David Schwartz 426]

On 5/20/2023 at 4:51 AM, DelphiUdIT said:

This discourse is absolutely misleading and meaningless.

The only thing "misleading and meaningless" is your ASSUMPTION that everybody who visits this site is subject to the same laws and agreements YOU are.

 

The only things that everybody who visits this site is affected by universally are EMBT's terms stated in their CE license. And THOSE are even controlled to a certain extent by local laws.

 

Two things control YOUR SPECIFIC situation: (1) YOUR employment contract; and (2) the laws in effect in the jurisdiction where YOU live.

 

It's very unlikely that any two visitors to this site are subject to the same legal terms in that respect. So telling someone else that you think what they say is "misleading and meaningless" is totally inappropriate. Are you a lawyer giving out legal advice? You have not even said what country you live in, or what State if you're in America! How do you know what applies to the rest of us?

 

I can tell you that the Non-Compete / Non-Disclosure Agreements companies present to workers in Arizona are very different from those presented to workers in California, because California imposes much stricter controls on what companies there can demand of their employees versus Arizona. Yet most programmers I know here in AZ haven't got a clue. Most employment agreements presented to workers in AZ would be found unenforceable in California. And they DO usually say that whatever you do 24/7/365 while working for them BELONGS TO THEM by default. 

 

So what happens when you get a contract to work for a California company at an AZ location and they present you with an employment agreement that would be unenforceable in California? Most programmers simply sign them -- and if you're dumb enough to sign it, then it IS enforceable IN ARIZONA! I just say I'll be happy to sign the paperwork they give to workers in California, and they say, "Ok" and send me different paperwork.

 

You're basically asking people who live in different places around the world to comment on a situation you're in without providng a reference point. And you're then asserting that replies you get are wrong. REALLY?

 

This isn't about EMBT's CE license or open-source software. You haven't given people enough details to know if it's got more to do with your specific employment situation, which may well be the controlling factor here. The truth is, from what you've said, YOU DON'T KNOW!

 

You're just GUESSING that it's related to the CE License Terms.

I have had employment agreements as well as contracts presented to me that would get me fired if what you described happened to me. It's NOT A JOKE. It might be "misleading and meaningless" to you, but not to everybody in the whole world.

 

It's inappropriate for you to simply shrug it off as if your situation applies universally to everybody here. Or that it's just EMBT's CE License Terms.
 

[DelphiUdIT 176]

@David Schwartz

I don't understand why you get so excited and I didn't think my post could offend anyone.

 

I live in Italy where I mainly work, even if I often travel around the world (in the next months I will come to California).

But this is absolutely indifferent to what I said.

I am not an employee and I have no employees or collaborators in the area near me and the only reference I have made in this whole speech is what I quoted and commented in the post (I am re-formulating my answer more clearly):

"a person who connects to a NON-PUBLIC network does not necessarily have to be an employee / collaborator or have an economic relationship with the owner of the network"

 

This I think (and in my case that I described is).
But to avoid "legal" trouble I prevented Delphi or C++ CE from being used on my network, to my reluctance.

And this is because I have repeatedly heard EMBT (see also in previous posts) discussing the use of a CE license within an organization's network.
I don't think it's right or wrong. I only "detected" the possible critical issues and avoided any legal problems.

 

Bye

[programmerdelphi2k 237]

As I said above, imagine the scenario:

• An avid programmer in Delphi, is on a trip, and takes the opportunity to debug his code, and, unfortunately, connects to the public and open Wifi at the train/metro station...
• he runs his application developed in Delphi CE, and,
• ... days later, the train/metro company receives a letter from Embarcadero saying that he "must" buy (without delay) a Professional or Enterprise license of Delphi, because it was detected that a Delphi CE application was being used on the day xx/xx/xxxx at xx:xxhr... and the company it's not eligible for $5000/year

Isn't this a dire situation caused by Embarcadero's type of marketing?

Edited May 23, 2023 by programmerdelphi2k

[Patrick PREMARTIN 69]

8 hours ago, programmerdelphi2k said:

As I said above, imagine the scenario

With the imagination we can go very far, in all directions, and suppose a little what we want others would do without knowing who they are or what level of intelligence or automatism they have.

EMB uses a company that specializes in license checks, let's assume that these people know their job and do it properly, it will avoid discussions about things that may never happen (and probably would if it had already happened).

[grantful 3]

I am working on an app to put out free to the public.

I use Delphi CE.

So if i am reading these comments correctly I CAN NOT put this app on the IOS, Android app store for Free.

 

Here is what i was reading. 

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq

 

3. What are the advantages to use the Community Edition?

The Community Edition is a great way to get started building high-performance applications. Community Edition includes a fully featured IDE, code editor, ultra-fast compiler, integrated debugger, two-way visual designers to speed development, hundreds of visual components. Note, however, that your use of the Community Edition is subject to certain restrictions stated in the License Agreement. We have summarized the restrictions applicable to the Community Edition throughout this FAQs.

For example, Community Edition is both designed to allow individuals and startups to bootstrap their vision until annual revenues reach $5,000 at which point you are required to stop using the Community Edition and purchase a paid license to continue using either the Delphi or C++Builder.

If you're an individual you may use Community Edition to create apps for your own use and apps that you can sell until your revenues reach $5,000 per year. For more information please read Question #5 below and the License Agreement.

Can someone clarify this for me?

Thanks

Edited May 27, 2023 by grantful

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

It is my understanding that Free = $0, so basically you simply sell it for $0 until your revenue reaches $5,000. Note that this includes any donations, even if the app is free. Also any paid support or training you are giving around your apps is probably counted for that limit.

 

As the FAQ is not a legal document I add the respective chapter from the license here:

Quote

ADDITIONAL LICENSE TERMS APPLICABLE TO THE COMMUNITY EDITION
In the event Licensee has obtained a Delphi Community Edition or a C++Builder Community Edition license (collectively, the "Community Edition") the following terms apply in addition to the General Terms described in Section 2 above. Please note that RAD Studio is not offered and may not be licensed as a Community Edition. The Community Edition license applies solely if Licensee cumulative annual revenue (of the for-profit organization, the government entity or the individual developer) or any donations (of the non-profit organization) does not exceed USD $5,000.00 (or the equivalent in other currencies) (the "Threshold"). If Licensee is an individual developer, the revenue of all contract work performed by developer in one calendar year may not exceed the Threshold (whether or not the Community Edition is used for all projects). For example, a developer who receives payment of $5,000.00 for a single project (or more than $5,000.00 for multiple projects) even if such engagements do not anticipate the use of the Community Edition, is not allowed to use the Community Edition. In addition, a developer building solely an app store application would not be allowed to use the Community Edition once the app store revenue reaches a revenue of $5,000.00 or more in a year. If Licensee is a company that has a cumulative annual revenue which exceeds the Threshold, then Licensee is not allowed to use the Community Edition, regardless of whether the Community Edition is used solely to write applications for the business' internal use or is seen by third parties outside the company or has a direct revenue associated with it. If Licensee does not qualify to use the Community Edition or otherwise satisfy the additional terms and restrictions applicable to the Community Edition described in this Section, Licensee's may not download or use of the Community Edition and any such use is unauthorized, constitutes a violation of this Agreement and may constitute a misappropriation of Licensor's intellectual property rights.
Licensee may use a Community Edition license to develop software (X) for which Licensee does not charge directly or indirectly a fee or receive other consideration including but not limited to a license fee, a service fee, a development fee, a consulting fee, a subscription fee, a support fee, a hosting fee, or receive an income, or the like ("License Fees") or (Z) to the extent Licensee charges License Fees, Licensee cumulative annual revenue shall not exceed USD $5,000.00 (or the equivalent in other currencies). The Community Edition Licensees are prohibited from moving the command line compiler to a different machine; therefore, the rights granted to Licensee in Section 2.4 do not apply to the Community Edition licenses.
In the event Licensee elects to license the Community Edition (for profit or non-profit) then (i) the total number of the Community Edition licenses deployed may not exceed five (5) individual users; and (ii) Licensees are only allowed to read the VCL, FireMonkey and other source code provided with the Community Edition.
The term of the Community Edition license is for one year from your first download or unsealing of Licensor's Products ("Community Edition Term") and will automatically expire upon the end of the Community Edition Term - the Community Edition license will not auto-renew. To the extent you want to continue using the Community Edition after the expiration or termination of your Community Edition Term, you must re-install the latest version of the Community Edition and agree with the terms and conditions of the Agreement in force at that time. For example, if Licensee installed the Community Edition v1.0 and upon expiration of the Community Edition Term intends to continue using the Community Edition then, subject to Licensee's continued compliance with the additional license terms and restrictions of the Community Edition, Licensee must re-install the then current version of the Community Edition license. Upon expiration of the Community Edition Term, all software developed using the Community Edition license may continue to be distributed by Licensee subject to the terms and restrictions of this Agreement. All restrictions and conditions relating to the Community Edition license shall survive the termination or expiration of your Community Edition Term. The Community Edition license granted under this Section will automatically terminate upon Licensee's breach of the terms specified in this Section. The support described in Section 6.2 below does not apply to the Community Edition Licensees. None of the indemnification rights set forth in this Agreement apply to the Community Edition Licensees.
Embarcadero will collect information about your use of the Community Edition for auditing purposes and improve our products and services. For more information about our collection, use and disclosure of personal data, please review Embarcadero's Privacy Statement at <https://www.embarcadero.com/privacy-statement>.
 

 

Anyway, if you want to make sure, you should better ask Embarcadero directly. 

[David Schwartz 426]

On 5/23/2023 at 1:52 PM, DelphiUdIT said:

@David Schwartz

I don't understand why you get so excited and I didn't think my post could offend anyone.

Sorry, I'm not offended. It's just how I come across sometimes. 

 

It's probably the jewish part of my upbringing... 😉 
 

That said, you seem intent on ignoring relevant details that have a direct bearing on the quality of replies you'll get.

 

This is a public forum where participants live all around the world. You'd be a fool to ask a legal question like you did and then give anybody's answer more than a grain of salt worth of credibility, unless someone replies who: (a) lives in the same country you do, or is familar with their laws; and (b) is familiar with the license terms you're referring to. 

 

Here's my take on this: you decided to save some money without consulting with a lawyer first, and it cost you what ... 5 times what a Pro license would have cost? Maybe you lucked out and didn't have to pay that yourself, but that's the problem with using "free" stuff -- sometimes it bites you in the ass.

 

I don't really pay close attention to their CE licenses because EMBT seems to tweak them every year and all I hear is a lot of complaining about them. A paid license is a lot cheaper than a lawyer if I get into a squeeze, and I certainly don't need to get jammed-up and forced to pay for the highest-price license they have in lieu of getting sued.

 

My best advice at this point is to suggest you contact a lawyer in your country, show them the license agreement and find out if there are any other surprises you don't know about. And before you come to America, find out if your license allows you to use it for the entire time you'll be here. 

Edited May 30, 2023 by David Schwartz

[Fr0sT.Brutal 900]

5 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

you decided to save some money without consulting with a lawyer first, and it cost you what ... 5 times what a Pro license would have cost?

Everyone is smart when looking back. I guess nobody could expect such a trap from Emba.

For the future seems reliable to put CE inside a VM or at least block all its network activities. You'll never know when they decide to blame you for, say, working with CE via McD's public WiFi.

[DelphiUdIT 176]

7 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

Sorry, I'm not offended. It's just how I come across sometimes. 

It's probably the jewish part of my upbringing... 😉

..................................

..................................

I also don't care about the CE, I have an Enterprise license and it wouldn't make sense to use a CE anyway. I use Delphi to "make money", why should I expose myself to legal issues?
That's why I don't let anyone around me use the CE, even if it would be possible.

 

It is not and will never be a problem to use software (obviously legally owned and in countries not subject to restrictions) on industrial machines produced by me.
So i can use it without any issue in USA, in EU, and anywhere I legally sell (or export) my line and work on (generally start up / maintenance).

I certainly don't come to America to steal the work of native developers 😉

 

Bye