wbthomason
commented
5 months ago Thanks, this is a good question.
The use you describe should be completely fine. Our understanding and intent of the noncommercial restriction is that use for a product, service, etc. that you are selling or otherwise profiting from is disallowed (although if you are interested in such, please send us an email; we can direct you to the right people to talk to at Rice University's Office of Technology Transfer); simply using the software as a member of a commercial organization is OK (unless, again, the software ends up in a commercial product). Generally speaking, using VAMP in research is both OK and encouraged!
That said, we're not lawyers and this is not legal advice, so if you have further questions or concerns, please let us know and we can pass them up the chain to the university.
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. PolyForm Noncommercial License seems to only allow noncommercial purpose. But I couldn't find clear definition of what is commercial and noncommercial. So I wonder if you could clarify some usages I'm supposing.
Let's say, I'm working in a commercial organization. I'm writing a new paper about motion planning. I want to use VAMP to benchmark with some problems to compare with our own stuff. The paper will be submitted to an academic conference as a part of my paid work. Is it OK to use VAMP to such purpose?