Are free runtimes in danger of extinction? A long-time user of Crystal Reports recently wrote to lament the licensing requirements Business Objects keeps adding to new versions of the venerable report generator.

"I don't know if anybody has mentioned this to you yet, but Crystal seems to be getting a little out of line," the reader wrote. "I was looking into an upgrade from version 9 to 10 and read their licensing terms for the developer versions. If you develop applications to be sold or distributed to a 3rd party, you are required to purchase an advanced developer license for each copy of each application that you distribute. This will tack on about $2000 onto the price. The terms are pretty much the same for web-based applications."

A series of major changes to Crystal Reports licensing since Version 7 has made the current terms difficult to comprehend, but the reader says that what customers can do with free runtimes has been considerably reduced. "The royalty required API's are for components that actually let users design new crystal reports from within your application," the reader wrote. "The free ones only permit viewing, printing, and exporting to Excel or e-mail."

The upshot is most users of Crystal Reports have to pay a lot more to distribute their applications to their customers. "I can't see any reason whatsoever for requiring a $2000 developer license just for using a component," the reader asserts. "Worst case should be requiring a Professional license, which at $600 is still way out of line. I sure hope Microsoft doesn't find out about this or pretty soon developers will have to buy a Visual Studio.NET license for every copy of every application they sell."

I don't know if we'll soon be seeing Client Access License requirements for Visual Studio.Net or not, but I can tell one thing. If we don't, it won't be because Microsoft hasn't thought about it.