File Name: COPYING.html, v 2.1 --- AFCommerce Free Public License Agreement
Author: Paul Crinigan, AmazingFlash.com
AFCommerce, Amazing Flash Commerce Solutions
http://www.afcommerce.com
Copyright (c) 2004 - 2006 AFCommerce
AFCommerce is Released under the AFCommerce Free Public License Agreement
The most current version of this document and this software can be found at:
http://www.afcommerce.com
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THIS FILE CAN BE FOUND IN THE MAIN CART'S DIRECTORY AND INSIDE THE ADMIN DIRECTORY. THEY MUST REMAIN INSIDE BOTH OF THESE DIRECTORIES OR THE CART WILL FAIL TO LOAD PROPERLY. ALSO, THE FILE NAMED "AFCommerceV2.txt" INSIDE THE MAIN CART'S DIRECTORY AND INSIDE THE ADMIN DIRECTORY MUST REMAIN THERE OR THE CART WILL ALSO FAIL. ALL OF THESE FILES ARE NOT ENCRYPTED, SO THEY CAN BE CLEARLY VIEWABLE TO ANY PERSON.
This is a copy of the AFCommerce Free Public License Agreement. This agreement was written by Paul Crinigan, and my attorney. Version 1 was released under the GNU license, but since version 2 had so many changes with the way this software is distributed, I needed to create my own. By using this software you are agreeing to be bound by all of the present terms of this license and any conditions that are later added. My conditions are not to restrict legal use of the software in any way, they are meant to protect me from illegal and unethical changes to the software. If you are simply using the shopping cart for your own use, my terms are NOT intended to scare you. This agreement MUST be distributed with every copy of this software and must not be modified in any way. Deleting this file or claiming that you never received or read it, will not release you in any way, and by using the software in whole or only in part bounds you unconditionally to them. This agreement does not require me to prove you have be notified of this agreement and by simply downloading, installing and using this software is proof that you have accepted ALL terms and conditions.
IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ANY PART OF THIS AGREEMENT, YOU MUST IMMEIATELY DELETE ALL FILES FROM EVERY COMPUTER THAT YOU HAVE ACCESS TO, AS WELL AS NOT UTILIZING ANY SCRIPT, PROGRAM, DOCUMENT, OR SERVICE THAT I PROVIDE AS WELL AS ANY OF MY CORPORATIONS, SUCCESSORS, BUSINESS PARTNERS, RESELLERS OR AFFILIATES. THIS AGREEMENT SHALL ALSO BE CONSIDERED VALID IN ALL COUNTRIES, STATES, AND OTHER AREAS OF THE WORLD, AND IN ANY CASE WHERE THE LAWS OF YOUR AREA DO NOT PROTECT THIS AGREEMENT, YOU MUST EITHER ACCEPT TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS, OR TERMINATE USE IMMEIATELY. FAILURE TO DO SO WILL FORCE ME TO TAKE ANY AND ALL LEGAL ACTIONS AGAINST YOU, AND IN ANY SITUATION WHERE THE LAWS OF YOUR COUNTRY DO NOT PROTECT ME AND THIS AGREEMENT IN FULL, ENTITLES ME TO TAKE ANY ACTION NECESSARY TO ENFORCE THIS AGREEMENT AND STOP YOU FROM ANY FUTHER USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
I want it to be clear that these conditions are mainly to protect me from people who intend on stealing the code to claim it as their own and to protect me from people who try to add their own advertisements to the administration tool. Simply using this software would not be considered stealing in, however it can NEVER be considered, called, or even referred to your own software. Software is defined on the files of AFCommerce, not your actual website, which of course would be owned by you, and in no way would ever be considered the properly of me or the AFCommerce community. These terms are worded harshly to show how I will respond to these types of problems. 99% of people using this cart will not do anything wrong, this is meant solely for the remaining 1%. Now with that said, here are the terms :
IF YOU DO NOT AGREE YOU MUST DELETE ALL VERISIONS OF THIS SOFTWARE IMMEDITAELY.
These terms are still in the process of being written at this time. This document gives the basic terms, however some new situations may come up where they will need to be amended. Remember of course, these terms are not meant to stop you from legal use of this software, and are only here to protect my rights as a software developers, as well as, protecting the rights of the community (including you) from misuse by other people who will ruin this project, which may stop me from continuing to improve it for free later on. If the entire community follows these simple rules, and looks out for the community, and Paul Crinigan himself, you will be helping promote the free exchange of the best programming code available in the world, for free, and continued improvement of this code, and the other free resources and information I give away on my websites. As such, these terms will be improved over time, and this agreement will hold you responsible for those terms as well, which will always be available on the AFCommerce support website.
Any attempt to switch the advertisement code or copyrights to your own name / company is not only illegal and unethical, but will also make you liable for damages to Paul Crinigan. You may NOT remove the copyright links at the bottom of each page even if you object to having them there, and you MUST not distribute this software without the advertisements intact, links removed, or even modified. Even if you sell or give away an installation service for this software, all advertising code and copyrights MUST remain intact and unmodified. Once you downloaded this software you were bound to be liable for these damages since they are real and substantial. Regardless of whether you believe you are doing something wrong or illegal, and regardless of what country you live in, if I or any other member of the community find that you are violating this policy, all money earned from the advertisements will be considered property of Paul Crinigan, and the AFCommerce project. If legal action must be taken to enforce this policy, you will be responsible to pay any and all reasonable attorney's fees, court fees, research costs needed to collect these damages, as well as a minimum fine of at least 3,000 USD for EACH violation. A violation is to be considered EACH term violated multiplied by each copy of the software distributed.
To any person who is not trying to violate this policy, Please do not be scared or intimidated by this policy, thinking it may somehow be used to hurt you down the road. This policy only applies to individuals who try to make money on the advertisements (or anything else) that rightfully belong to the AFCommerce Project, and this policy will only be used to protect Paul Crinigan and the creditability of the advertisements displayed in the admin tool. If you downloaded this software from any place other than afcommerce.com, or another website on the approved list, please be extremely careful. I can not guarantee that any other website is following the ethical guidelines that I set, and that the advertisements are not collecting information from you. The website address for the advertisements should have afcommerce.com in the address, and also make sure that the address wasn't made to look similar to afcommerce.com. Any advertisements on afcommerce.com will be carefully watched by me and / or my company to protect you, however I can not be liable for any action taken by another person that hurts AFCommerce and affects you. I can only guarantee that I will do everything in my power to keep you safe, and I do not expect to have any problems. You may make a profit by selling an installation or customization service, but you may not add any advertisements in to the software, even if you keep mine. You may add a link to your own website if you designed the website that uses the software, as this is standard practice in the industry. Even pages that you have modified or written completely on your own, may NOT have advertisements unless they are not considered part of the shopping cart software. If you are unsure of whether you are allowed to do something, please ask on the forums or by contacting amazingflash.com. You need written permission to do anything with this software, so claiming that I didn't respond to you will not be a valid argument. I will ignore any questions that have already been answered in this policy notice.
Removing of the copyright links can be done legally ONLY IF you receive written permission from Paul Crinigan. There is a fee of 1000 dollars (US dollars) to remove the links, so if you remove them without receiving permission, you will be held liable for 1000 dollars plus all legal costs of collecting this payment. I actually am not trying to sell this software without links, I would rather you just keep the links intact and pay nothing, but I understand that sometimes you will have a good reason to not want it displayed, so I offer you another option. The copyright links get the word out about the software and therefore help the project, and that is why I require them to stay intact.
The advertisements are not generated from your website, therefore they do not use your bandwidth or disk space. They are remotely called from a file that is hosted on the afcommerce.com website and are displayed in a framed window.
Some files are encrypted in the software and MUST remain completely intact with no modification of any kind. Any attempts to reverse-engineer or decode this file is a direct violation of this agreement and is subject to fines of any country to comply with applicable law.
Encryption protects both AFCommerce and you, the end user by stopping most hackers from being able to read my code and attack your website. Any theft of this code, or any other AFCommerce code will result in legal action in all countries, and any and all remedies that may be sought.
It is possible for someone to crack the encryption but I will warn you right now, that there are several different methods used, and if you are caught the fines are at least 1,000 USD per file or 10,000 USD for each domain name that you use these files on, whichever is greater. I have hired law firms in almost every country that do not require me to pay any amount of money for them to start legal proceedings against you. I will pay them 50% of the amount that you are required to pay in court and they also receive an additional bonus for finding people who are in violation.
Any attempt whatsoever to modify to any extent any portion of this software as another product other than AFCommerce will receive the highest fines and penalties that may be imposed by law. This includes creating your own software that uses any portion of the AFCommerce software in its present condition, in future versions, and add ons products to this software. Fines and penalties that can be enforced by this agreement for such a violation shall be no less than 10,000 USD for each copy distributed whether free or for a fee, and any additional fees that were received for such distribution. The fees obtained by you for such a product will be considered the property of the AFCommerce project, currently owned by Paul Crinigan and Patrick Ferlazzo, and since such fees are being held without cause, the highest interest rate allowed by law shall be enforced until all fees are paid back to AFCommerce. All reasonable attorney fees, legal expenses, and incidental costs incurred for collection of these fines and penalties are also to be paid in full as permitted by law. This is considered the worst violation of this agreement and should be avoided to help continue the growth of the AFCommerce project.
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt
otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under
this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such
parties remain in full compliance.
Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further
restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to
this License.
If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot
distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you
may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent
license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under
any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to
apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other
circumstances.
AFCommerce does not induce you to infringe on any
patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any
such claims. This agreement has the sole purpose of protecting the
integrity of the free AFCommerce software distribution system.
If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in
certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the
original copyright holder who places the Program under this License
may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding
those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among
countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates
the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
AFCommerce may publish revised and/or new versions
of the AFCommerce Free License from time to time. Such new versions will
be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns, and you are hereby agreeing to any such conditions as long as they are permitted by law.
If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author
to ask for permission. Permission for any changes to any of the license agreement requirements for any AFCommerce license agreement will generally not be permitted. If any such permission is granted it may only be granted by Paul Crinigan or his attorney, and must be in writing and signed by each party. This file must remain in both the main shopping cart directory and inside the admin directory, which may be renamed to suit a programmatic purpose, but whatever the name of the directory for the administration tool's php files, this file must remain intact, with absolutely no modification.
*** NO WARRANTY ***
BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED "AS IS", THERE IS NO WARRANTY
FOR THE PROGRAM OR ANY SUCH PROGRAMS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED THROUGH THE AFCOMMERCE WEBSITE OR OFFICALLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE AFCOMMERCE PROJECT, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. IF THIS AGREEMENT IS INCORPORATED IN ANY OTHER AFCOMMERCE LICENSE AGREEMENT, ALL THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT WILL ALSO APPLY TO THAT AGREEMENT UNLESS IT CLEARLY EXPRESSES A DIFFERENT WARRANTY FOR EACH PURPOSE THAT IS TO BE SUPERCEEDED. THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS
TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME ALL NECESSARY REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY
YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER
PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
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The links back to my website, and the advertisement banner that I place inside the admin area are more than reasonable requests to not only provide, in my opinion (and many others), the best ecommerce solution in the world, but also more documentation, constant upgrades, a ton of automatic installation, upgrade, and server improvement features, great support, and a lot more. AFCommerce does require these links, and it is extremely insulting to me when people remove them. I spent alot of my own personal time, spending night and day building one of the best software projects, all by myself. I'm sorry to be so cocky about this, and I am certainly not trying to insult any other projects, sincerely, I respect ALL good code from all programming languages.
Anyone who was using version 1, which was only released about 6 months ago, saw how fast AFCommerce has improved, and continues to improve daily. I see website companies saying it all the time, how they are "working day and night improving their scripts", when in fact, I actually do that with AFCommerce. I passed every other cart in 6 months, with a total (so far) of less than 80 days of development (not including writing docs, support, etc), so I must have been working pretty hard to make this happen. Then to see a developer make a beautiful site, which by the way I love to see (when the rules are followed of course), They add their own link to their company, but have to remove my link because it's "unprofessional". I used the small font type and smallest size for the link, and put it at the very bottom of the page, and I think I have done the hardest part (no offense) building it, and not only the great functionality and default design, but I took so many extra steps to make the software so easy to design, that even cheap developer (as in their price to their customers), can sell an AFCommerce website for 500 dollars that took them an hour to set up, including customization time.
So keeping my links in place should seriously be understood as a way to disrespect me, and I will be taking this very seriously. Now some people get mad whenever they are told they "HAVE" or "MUST" do something, and will even use worse software just because they can remove the links or be able to edit admin area files (that they normally won't edit anyway) because of this, and I guess there is nothing I can do to help this. You really should try to see it from my perspective, and realize how much I am giving away for free, and even with my new add ons that are not free, if you had any idea what these pieces of software would cost if you had them custom built, and with half of my add ons, I am the only company (that I have seen anyway), that has them. I am a programmer, not a salesman, and I have done every single thing with this project myself, including the marketing plan, key partnerships, my ad network, reseller program, I have by far the easiest to install PayPal websites payments pro payment gateway, which can be used on any server (it only requires curl, instead of the 15+ rare PEAR modules required by the PayPal SDK), and about 50 add ons that will all be ready in 2007 (most will be this year). I am only about 30% complete with what the free cart will be within the next 2 years, and since I already past most (if not all) other carts already, just with the free version, how can any one else keep up with me now ? Now I know when I talk this big, so there will be a lot of criticism anytime I make even the smallest mistake, trust me, I expect this, and will just have to ignore all negative comments, and keep moving forward. I am still constantly adding new features and functions, I even keep making functions that the software does even use, they are just there for you, the end developer to use for your own features. This is to make all of you better developers, and if you are already good, AFCommerce can only make you that much stronger, and you can make good money on every single thing that I do sell.
So the bottom line is, I know I can talk way too much, but please respect my project by following the reasonable rules I set forth. I even also now willing to let people remove the links and even the ads in the admin area, for a small fee, if you absolutely MUST take them off. I would actually rather you keep the links that pay me any money, and I seriously believe the Powered By AFCommerce link provides creditability to your website because as the AFCommerce name continues to gain respectability, which I feel it already has, your customers can feel safer with your website because they will know your using a good system. Also, this is where the encryption actually does benefits you, because anyone who knows that the security features are encrypted knows that they make the software safer than most. Of course, it's not an absolute protection since it can be cracked (with major work and skill), but it's still much safer than fully open source software.
So the links must remain in tact or I will have no choice but to ban websites without them. I know this will lose me some users, I am certainly not happy about that, but any one who can not either leave my links on all AFCommerce pages, or pay the (around) 50 dollar fee to take them off, regardless of how you try to justify it to yourself, I just don't feel you should get the MANY MANY benefits of being a part of the AFCommerce community. This includes using the forums, becoming an affiliate, using the 200+ pages of documentation (done by June 2006) including the new video tutorials (end of 2006), free live support service, and even using the software at all. Why should anyone receive all of these benefits when they don't even respect the project ?
AFCommerce is Released under the AFCommerce Free Public License Agreement, which is another document that I wrote myself because this software is released with a different type of license than any of the normal ones used. I believe strongly in free software and services, I have at least 5 major ones already, I also believe in open source software to share knowledge, but if we lived in an honest world I would have been able to keep it completely open source, but we simply do not live in an honest world, so I had to place restrictions on its use and distribution. I want all of you to benefit from it, I want AFCommerce to be the biggest reason for your success in your online business, but I have replaced my hosting and development company (I only take large software projects now), with the AFCommerce project, and all of the Amazing Flash software and services. So now all I do is make pre-built software for the world to use, so please respect my software (and its rules) OR simply do not use it.
To the majority of people who do follow these reasonable rules and appreciate all of my hard work, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR SUPPORTING AFCOMMERCE !!!