Using third party programs with your vb program

Hi there,

Can you integrate programs like Microsoft word, excel, adobe photoshop etc into your vb6 program? Do you need permission from Microsoft, Adobe companies etc to sell the vb6 program?

Any info is appreciated.

Regards,

Simon

As those programs need license for one to be able to use them then it follows that your users should have a license to be able to use those.

To clarify your response:

If my users own Microsoft Word, Adobe photoshop etc legitimately (purchased from a retail store, not pirated) this means they have a license to use the software (Microsoft Word, Adobe photoshop etc). It is irrelevant whether they use these programs via my program because they already have a license? Is this correct?

Simon

Yes, that is correct.

Ok, what about the separate issue of me integrating third party programs (i.e. Word, photoshop etc) into my own vb6 program? Is this acceptable also? I understand what you said about my 'users (i.e license) now I need to clarify my options as a 'programmer'.

(sorry to sound repetitive, just need to be sure)

Simon

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'Integrate' in this context. All those programs expose some sort of API which you can use freely in your program in order to make your users version of the 3rd party app behave in the way you choose (e.g. you could open excel from you program, bung some values in cells and print it out). You don't need any special licence to do this and you can happily ship your product. However, if your user doesn't have the apropriate thrid party app installed those calls will fail and your app will crash. Basically, your user needs to have a valid install (and licence) for any third party app you want to use.

I think you might be saying can you 'embed' word in your app in some way. The answer to that is no. There is no mechanism for doing so. At best you could ship it with your product but you'd still be dealing with it as a saparate app and the user would still need a separate license. You'd also want to check the licence agreement for the particular product in question to see if you are allowed to ship it (it usually wouldn't be a problem, as long as a licence is getting paid for most software producers are happy.)

Edit> Maybe it would eb a good idea if you could give us an example of what you intend to do and we can then let you know whether it's legit or not.

Edit> It's also worth noting that you don't need a licence to write calls to a third party products API into your program... though testing might be a problem.

To answer your question: "Maybe it would be a good idea if you could give us an example of what you intend to do and we can then let you know whether it's legit or not."

I designed a program in vb6. My program stores customer information (i.e. names, addresses, emails etc) of their clients in a database. My program can 'open' Microsoft word and display a premade letter template (names, addresses from customer database are loaded into word's mail merge tool. This is it. Just transferring customer's database data to Microsoft word.

I have done the same with Adobe Photoshop. The user can select an image from my program to export to a photo editing program (i.e. photoshop, paint etc).

Does this sound legit?

Yes that is fine. You're just interfacing with the application.