by
Marko Rüterbories
| Sep 25, 2010
Among technical modifications Progress has changed the OpenEdge license agreement (EULA) with Service Pack 2. Prior to the service pack the usage of the AVM / .NET Bridge was restricted to the use for building .NET UIs as part of the Progress runtime. Many developers where uncertain about the consequences of this restriction and also unhappy with the fact that the license prohibited the use of non UI related .NET components that would simplify the access to other .NET resources or the Windows API in general. As a result of the successful “Help us test the bridge” initiative (https://community.progress.com/community_groups/openedge_development/f/19/t/1178 and https://community.progress.com/community_groups/openedge_development/f/19/t/1167) Progress decided to remove the restrictions from the EULA. Prior to Service Pack 2 the EULA contained the following paragraph under the additional terms section:
“2. The products listed below include the “OpenEdge AVM to Microsoft .NET CLR intra-process communication” (“AVM to CLR Bridge” or the “Bridge”). At this time, the allowable uses of the Bridge are restricted to developing or deploying Microsoft .NET Winforms User Interfaces for business applications using OpenEdge products, and for one-way usage of AVM calling the CLR (and not vice versa).
Any use of the Bridge other than as set forth in the previous paragraph is prohibited. Additionally, the Bridge may not be used for multi-threaded processes. …“
This section has been removed completely and without replacement! This opens door for a much wider (and creative) usage of the .NET Framework from within the OpenEdge GUI client, especially for integration purposes and Windows API access. Progress has not yet committed to enable to usage of the .NET Bridge from other runtimes like TTY clients or the OpenEdge AppServer or WebSpeed. But I’m sure that relaxing the usage restrictions of the bridge form the OpenEdge EULA makes it more certain that this feature will be implemented some time.
See your %DLC%\licenses\openedge\OpenEdge_EULA.rtf for further details.