Business Use

CCleaner for Windows
1

These forums are full of topics with moderators stating that CCleaner is free for business use (http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=18331, http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=20850, http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=4147, http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=31345, http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=25076, etc.).

In fact, I cannot find a single topic in these forums that states otherwise.

Addtionally, I cannot find anything that in my interpretation goes against that in CCleaner's latest License Agreement, with the only mentioning of business use that I could find being the following:

"Where you are licensing the Product as a business and not as a consumer, this licence shall take effect between Piriform and you as a business entity and you shall take all appropriate steps to ensure that the Product is operated in a proper manner by your employees and staff."

Yet, when enquired about the differences between the free and Business versions of CCleaner, a Piriform sales representative was quick to dismiss any kind of free business use of CCleaner:

"Thank you for your interest in CCleaner. Our free product is meant to be used in an in-home setting installed on a home computer. It is not to be distributed or networked without consent of Piriform. All commercial installations including non-profit are included in our Business Edition, Network Edition and Professional Edition. We do have special non-profit discounts available. If you would like a quote please feel free to contact me directly."

So, what is it then? Am I missing something? Is CCleaner free for business use or not? Has Piriform changed the terms to disallow free business use of CCleaner?

2

Where did you enquire, and who was the "Piriform sales representative" ?

I suspect you may be a potential victim of a CCleaner look-a-like rip-off.

Have you seen our site

http://www.piriform....leaner/download

What you get for free now SPECIFICALLY states "No Support"

This actually means no-one may demand priority support from the Employees of Piriform who DEVELOP the software.

I am not aware of any change to this historic position.

HOWEVER any-one can seek and obtain "Best Endeavour" Support from volunteers in this forum,

regardless of whether they are retired pensioners or I.T. Support that is using CCleaner on commercial business computers.

If you feel the need for priority support you may consider paying for the Home or Business versions.

Depending on your needs you may even find it worth considering

http://www.piriform....network-edition

This allows central administration, which I guess allows remote control by I.T. to clean computers whilst users are absent,

together with "lock-down" to prevent users "accidentally" doing a secure delete of vital documents.

3

Thank you for your reply.

I enquired here http://www.piriform.com/contact, the Piriform sales representative was supposedly a Director of Commercial Sales Frank J. Fasano.

I replied as follows, I am still awaiting a reply:

"Frank,

you are welcome, thank you for your reply.

Please explain then why the official Piriform forums are full of threads with Moderators claiming CCleaner is free for all to use, including for businesses (http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=18331, http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=20850, http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=4147, http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=31345, http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=25076, etc.).

Please additionally explain why free-CCleaner's own latest License Agreement does not include any such terms and the only terms mentioning business use simply state the following:

"Where you are licensing the Product as a business and not as a consumer, this licence shall take effect between Piriform and you as a business entity and you shall take all appropriate steps to ensure that the Product is operated in a proper manner by your employees and staff."

We look forward to your reply, thank you in advance."

Yes, I have seen your site - do you work for Piriform? -, but my question was not so much about support as it was about the price for business use.

I assume from your post that CCleaner is free for business use then - is this correct?

I am aware of the Network Edition, but I still do not see the (great) benefit of it (or any other paid version, for that matter) compared to deploying CCleaner Portable Edition to a network share and run it with a logoff script via Group Policy (as described in the last post of the first page of this topic, by sirwardle: http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=14936), or at least I do not think it is worth the price difference (free vs. paid).

4

Please understand that I have no official status.

I am a volunteer and have stated my understanding of the situation.

Above me are Moderators of this forum who may know of changes to policy,

and I am fairly certain that they will respond here if I am wrong.

The portable version includes License.txt, and the ONLY feature worthy of note is

"We reserve the right to withdraw any such consent (or part thereof) for any reason and without notice and to demand that you immediately cease any activity in respect of which permission is withdrawn."

That is GENERAL and applies to everyone - not specifically Business users.

It would be extremely difficult for Piriform to "demand that you immediately cease any activity" if they do not have your contact details.

5

I was always under the impression that CCleaner was free for use in business as long as you weren't profiting directly from its use (selling it)

6

Thank you for your replies.

Yes, I too was under that impression, that is why my question to Piriform was not even related to that (I simply enquired them about the differences between the free and Business versions) and that is also why I was (and still am) quite perplexed with this reply I got from Piriform.

I appreciate any further input anyone might have or want to share.

7

Hi FilGov.

The statements you've seen in various posts from moderators (who have no affiliation with Piriform), are honestly given, and as far as I'm concerned Piriform products are still free to everyone, whether business or home user, and until we are told differently that will remain the case.

There is one section of the current "Software Licence Agreement for Consumers" which appears to confirm this ...

You are under no obligation to purchase any Product support from Piriform. However, where you do so, this Licence is subject to any further limitations which may be set out in your support agreement with Piriform.

Section 3. Last Paragraph:

This is being looked into at the moment, but I felt it necessary to simply confirm that the "free to all" statements from both members and moderators are given honestly and in good faith, and are accurate as far as they are aware.