What is covered by the "not for redistribution" clause in licenses?

Question

Sorry if this isnt suited to this site, I wasnt really sure about it.

Basically I have a 3rd-party application which is free to use but which says its not redistributable which I was hoping our group could use but I am unclear if making it available on a purely internal network share for the group would violate this or not? Is something only redistributed if you make it available outside your company?

To answer the questions below as to why they cannot get it themselves. Its a matter of convenience the network it would be on is not connected to the internet in any way, its not just say 1 utility/sdk it might be dozens, there is also the issue of ensuring a current version is being used by all etc.

Answer 1

You should ask the issuer of the Software about this. Why can't the people of the group get it on their own? Perhaps there lies the answer to your question..

Answer 2

I would probably interpret re-distribution as including in your own solution that you sell on to customers. i.e. in an installer, or perhaps relying on some functionality in that application to allow yours to run.

But then I'm not a lawyer and I'd advise contacting the vendor to clarify their meaning.

Answer 3

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. My opinion is that making an application available on an internal network share is a form of distribution, as it is a meaningful intermediary step in the chain of possession between the copyright holder and the end user and is "one-to-many", i.e. the copyright holder is transferring the product from themselves to you and you are transferring it from yourself to multiple end users.

It's reasonably likely that the copyright holder did not intend to forbid this form of distribution, though, and you might want to simply ask them for permission to do it. Probably what they didn't want is people selling or publicly redistributing the product.