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Comments are going completely off-topic and no longer helping address the OP's question.
Which version for Oculus research at a university?
I work at a large university and plan to do research using an Oculus Rift with software made with Unity. We will not be selling our software, but will only use it for research.
Do we need to purchase the Pro version or can we use the free version? Thanks.
Sounds like you need to contact Unity sales directly. The answers site is users helping users. A Unity staff might read it but you should not count on it.
Just remember that a sales reps job is to sell you something,
Likely they will send you to Studica. Thats what they did when I was looking at equipping a lab with pro at a school I taught at. Their quote for the lab machines was in between the pro professor price and the individual academic price and well outside our budget for an entire lab.
In the end, we kept Community in the labs and encouraged students to buy pro academic for themselves They never gave us a hard time about it, I suspect because they knew that doing so just would have forced us to $$anonymous$$ch our students a competitor's product ins$$anonymous$$d.
Answer by tanoshimi · Nov 13, 2014 at 05:08 PM
Does your university have a total annual budget in excess of $100,000? If so, you can't use Unity Free and must purchase a Pro licence anyway - nothing to do with OR. http://unity3d.com/legal/eula
Yep sorry rbooton and tanoshimi, I forgot completely about the annual budget Licence agreement requirements, I was just thinking in terms of OR support being made available to Unity free users.... :(
I will delete that misleading answer.
It definitely has a annual budget greater than $100,000, I'm sure even the tiniest community college has a budget greater than that. This seems odd since most software companies give universities and students a discount rather than forcing them to pay when others don't. Can someone working for Unity please verify this for me?
Answer by Jeff-Kesselman · Nov 13, 2014 at 06:52 PM
Okay, so first off, any professor or student can get a Unity Pro 1 year Academic license for $150. Or you can get a commercial pro license as a professor for 50% off. The difference is a watermark and what you can do with the output. (Academic is non-commercial distribution only)
Look here: http://www.studica.com/unity
The RIFT sdk beta however can work with Unity free as of version 0.4.3 https://developer.oculus.com/
So the choice is yours depending on what other features you need. Academic institutions fall into a special category and a great many of them use Unity Free as a teaching aid today and AFAIK Unity hasn't said boo to any of them.
Among other things, at least in the US, its generally not worth the hassle of chasing academic institutions as they have particularly broad protections under the category of 'fair use.' And its not good press. BUT since you can get a pro license for $150 its probably not worth it on an individual professor/researcher level to struggle with the limits of Community ed.
Sorry, but this is wrong. "The choice" is not yours, and the EULA is quite explicit:
"If you are accepting the terms of this Agreement on behalf of a Legal Entity for use of Unity Free, you represent and warrant that ... if the Legal Entity is an educational, academic, non-profit or government entity, the total annual budget for the entire Legal Entity during its prior fiscal year did not exceed US$100,000 (or an equivalent amount in another currency). You expressly acknowledge and agree that if the annual gross revenues or annual budget, as applicable, of the Legal Entity during its prior fiscal year exceeded US$100,000 (or an equivalent amount in another currency), then Unity is unwilling to license Unity Free to you, and you must destroy all copies of Unity Free in your possession or control or you must purchase Unity Pro."
Can you point me at any case where that has been successfully enforced by the courts in the United States? or even been pursued in the courts?
In any event, its mostly irellevent. He can call it HIS personal license, and he is not an institution. Then none of what you quoted in any way applies.
a.) What's this got to do with the United States? "This Agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Denmark, without regard to or application of conflict of laws rules or principles."
b.) Can you point to any reputable educational institution that allows its staff to either a.) knowingly breach the terms of a software licence? or b.) use personal software for research use?
a) Everything. You need to sue a US institution in the US courts. An institution (or person) is only bound by the laws of the country in which it operates. If Russia passes an anti-gay law, can you be jailed in Denmark for being gay?
Although the Berne convention brought some uniformity to copyright laws they are still individual and vary both in wording and interpretation country to country.
b) Just about every institution i have ever worked at has had staff using personal software. There were no limits about such. I use a lot of personal software preparing lecture materials. Schools like it when you spend your own money on your $$anonymous$$ching materials.
And a "breech" can only be deter$$anonymous$$ed by the courts. Were it to fall into "fair-use" then there would be no breech because no license would be required. This is something that can only be deter$$anonymous$$ed in a court of law.
By calling it a "breech of license' you are simply begging the question. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question)
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