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Apple Revises QuickTime 3 Licensing

In a move sure to be welcomed by developers and users, Apple has announced plans to revise QuickTime 3 licensing policies (see “Furor Over Developer Programs & QuickTime Licensing” in TidBITS 425). The new QuickTime 3 licensing terms, which should be available along with new QuickTime 3.0 installers at the end of May, change the terms of QuickTime 3’s royalty-free distribution such that developers must run the QuickTime 3 installer as part of their product’s installation, or direct users to it if the product doesn’t have an installer. The new QuickTime 3 installer will show an ad for QuickTime 3 Pro and copy the “Get QuickTime Pro” movie to the user’s desktop once, rather than every time the product is launched. (As before, products can include ad-free versions of QuickTime 3 or QuickTime 3 Pro for $1 or $2 per copy.) In addition, Apple plans to revise the QuickTime Web browser plug-in so that it plays the “Get QuickTime Pro” movie (and copies it to the desktop) only the first time it’s invoked after installation, rather than every time. Apple has also introduced new licensing terms for QuickTime 2.1.2 for Windows, so if Windows products using QuickTime distribute QuickTime 3, they can also include QuickTime 2.1.2 for Windows 3.1 systems only.


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