Update: ePublisher Pro license
posted by Sarah
This evening, Quadralay's Vice President of Sales posted some additional details about the licensing program in the wwp-users group (message available here, but only if you are a member of the group). He also pointed to a PDF version of the EULA, available here.

This agreement, dated May 24, 2007, removes the most onerous provisions that I described in an earlier post. In particular:

• The auditing provisions have been removed entirely.
• The definition of "user" now includes:

  A “user” under this EEULA shall be construed broadly to include anyone to whom you permit access to design/maintain stationery by use of the Software; or publish content by use of the Software; or create/modify a source document that is published by use of the Software.

Notably, they are no longer claiming that reviewers are "users."

By the standards of the previous license, this seems almost reasonable.

Almost.

The content development process is increasingly complex. Two scenarios that don't fit the new model very well are:

• An organization with numerous part-time content contributors for whom writing is only a small part of their responsibilities.
• An organization where some documentation is generated from code comments and then commingled with information written by technical communicators. In that case, is every developer a "user"? What if the documentation is generated into DITA XML and then pushed through the ePublisher DITA adapter?

According to Greg Roig:

An important note to include here is that these users are defined as
those that create and compile source documents. Those people in the
organization who only contribute content to source documents are not
considered users. So if you are an SME [subject matter expert] or you write code or text that gets placed into a source document, you are not required to be licensed.

In the case of a FrameMaker-based workflow, the SMEs rarely have access to the FrameMaker source files directly. But in a Word or DITA-based workflow, SMEs often "modify source documents."

Finally, there is no pricing available on Quadralay's web site. To get a quote, you must fill out a form and contact Quadralay.

I still think the correct answer is to take a hard look at a standards-based workflow with XML and XSL.

Labels: ePublisher Pro

8:00 PM Permalink |