[OT] MS EULA -- (will ActiveState become outlaws? ;-)

[Roeland Rengelink]

"Steven D. Majewski" wrote:
> 
> Is this the next stage of Microsoft's war against Open Source ?
> 
> Discussion of this on SlashDot :
> <http://slashdot.org/articles/01/06/21/1810258.shtml>
> ( Right before the article on the Monty Python Action Figures! )
> 
> If this spreads to all of Microsoft's EULA's, will this make
> ActiveState illegal ?  They don't specifically mention Python's
> license, but they do mention Perl's ( and the "similar to any
> of the following" clause would seem to include Python's. )
> 
> Does anyone know if this should be taken seriously ?
> 
> -- Steve Majewski
> 
> <http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdn-files/027/001/516/eula_mit.htm>

Ironically, NS under Linux refuses to display that ;)

> 

Well, as I see it the GPL licence is morally equivalent to

1. This is raging commie stuff
2. You can't use raging commie stuff in conjunction with evil empire
stuff

and this microsoft licence is morally equivalent to

1. This is evil empire stuff
2. You can't use evil empire stuff in conjunction with raging commie
stuff

For once the free software movement and microsoft seem to agree on
something

More seriously, the lack of a definition of ''use'' under (ii), and the
misleading definition of Potentially Viral Software gives the impression
that this was written by their PR department, rather than their lawyers. 

But then, I know as little about law as I do about PR.

Roeland
-- 
r.b.rigilink at chello.nl

"Half of what I say is nonsense. Unfortunately I don't know which half"