Re: [seul-edu] CueCats

[Jim Thomas <jthomas@bittware.com>]

Chris Lehmann wrote:
> 
> Are they still making these? I'd love to use these for our school...
>

Yes.  I picked one up yesterday.  The only caveat is the EULA, which is
truly horrendous.  Digital Convergence (maker of cuecat) says the the
scanner hardware is not yours, but is rather licensed from them.  They
do not prohibit (as best I can tell) the use of alternate software with
their reader, but they do prohibit the creation of "derivative works." 
Well!  I'm not "creating" a deriviative work, although I sure might
employ one.

There's a big stink surrounding this, and I'd recommend that anyone
wishing to use a cuecat carefully consider the implications of the EULA:
http://www.digitalconvergence.com/ula.html

I was pretty excited about this until I gave *that* a read.  Now I'm
pretty bummed.

The worst thing about their EULA is that if you install their SW on a
computer which is subject to nightly backups, you've violated their
license.  It REALLY stinks!

As a result, I doubt we'll be able to use it for user authentication at
our school.  I will, however, use it when I undertake the task of
entering our library collection into Koha, but on *my* laptop.  

It's very difficult to imagine how they could detect that you've pressed
their devices into an alternate use, and it would indeed be very sweet
for user authentication.   

Sorry for the rambling nature of this post...

-- 
Jim Thomas                            E-mail:     jthomas@bittware.com  
Senior Applications Engineer          Web:     http://www.bittware.com
Bittware, Inc                         Tel:              (703) 779-7770
Reality continues to ruin my life. - Calvin