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Setup & Installation / Re: Multiple installations of AOS?
« on: September 01, 2023, 01:48:42 pm »Then there is the question of whether I need the Personal or Commercial AOS. If I, a sole person, write a novel and flog it to a publisher (hey, one can dream), that's commerce, right? But if AOS helps make a communicable form of the novel from a version previously fashioned in my mind...?
I'm not speaking for Arca Noae, but...
TTBOMK, "commercial" use of software means any of:
- Using the software as part of running a business (whether incorporated or not)
- Using the software to directly earn income (e.g. doing consultancy on it, reselling it as part of an integrated product, etc.)
- Using the software to support an income-generating infrastructure (e.g. using it to develop commercial software, running an income-generating website on it, etc.)
Your novel question gets into fuzzy territory. If you use word processing software to write a novel, which you then publish and earn income from, that would likely count as commercial use of the word processor. Anything at a further remove from the activity is more ambiguous IMO. Does it count as commercial use of the OS you run the word processor on? (That isn't quite the same as the developing-software example above, because most likely neither the word processor nor the published novel depend on that particular OS to function.) Commercial use of the computer you run the OS on? Commercial use of the home where the computer is located? Commercial use of the electricity you use to power the computer? I think the answer to all of those is "maybe, but it depends".
Maybe a simple rule of thumb would be to use your local government's definition of what qualifies as a business expense.
Some interesting (though not very conclusive) discussion on the topic. There isn't really a cut-and-dried answer.
https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/12642/how-is-commercial-use-of-software-defined