Vista EULA
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"You may not
· work around any technical limitations in the software;"
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There is no way this can be in there for real can there?
I mean, loosly interpreted or maybe not, if Vista can not handle your graphical requirements using it's own graphics engine you can not create one for your game. There goes advancements such as the Quake engine and many others.
And even more loosly interpreted, if Vista doesn't do it for you, you don't need it done. There goes all 3d rendering, money management, business management or accounting software.
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Wow, finally, Microsoft has made Windows' EULA 180 degrees from the GNU
Public License. Isn't Linux's philosophy "Please work around any
technical limitations in the software"?
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I am not a Microsoft-lover. I am also not a lawyer. That said, I can see what they were trying to stop with this clause, when you look at it in context:
8. SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. For more information, see http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/userights. You may not:
- work around any technical limitations in the software;
- reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation;
- use components of the software to run applications not running on the software;
- make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;
- publish the software for others to copy;
- rent, lease or lend the software; or
- use the software for commercial software hosting services.
I read this as a fairly standard attempt to stop users from "hacking", "cracking" or modifying it to remove things like DRM or Activation. That said, the wording is pretty vague, and could be used for nefarious purposes.
Overall, though, this is fairly minor, especially in comparison to section 15, which pretty much permanently ties one license to one "device". (In other words, forget about removing your copy of Vista from machine 'A' and installing it on machine 'B'). Actually, you're allowed to do that once, but never again.
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Wow. I'd like to see the full context of that line, but at first glance I'm beginning to agree with some of the Antitrust complaints...
Edit: Posted this before I saw the post directly above...thanks!
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This actually makes sense
I am not at all surprised by MS doing this. One of the things that has always dogged MS is the requirement that they make each new version of Windows backwards-compatible with older software. Many vendors throughout the years have tapped into obscure or completely undocumented features in the Windows API, and MS has been forced to continue including these back-door hacks in each new version in order to prevent older versions of large vendor software from breaking. My guess is that vendors will continue doing this sort of thing anyway, but MS will be able to fall back on the EULA when Vista breaks their code.
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[quote user="Sgt. Zim"]
I am not a Microsoft-lover. I am also not a lawyer. That said, I can see what they were trying to stop with this clause, when you look at it in context:
[/quote]
That could be achieved by saying "you may not work around any such limitations". Leaving out the word "such" implies "any limitations whatsoever".
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Seems to me that "any technical limitations" basically means 'If we don't write an API for it you're not allowed to do it'. As a guess I would think this is where Symantic and McAfee are getting upset with MS.
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"publish the software for others to copy;"
That kind of makes things tricky for us admins. Does this prohibit having it on a network share? Ghost/similar images?
"rent, lease or lend the software;"
So... if I lend someone my laptop, I have to remove Vista beforehand, loaning them an OS-less machine?
"work around any technical limitations in the software;"Wait... so if a flaw in some API or something allows a variant of Blaster or similar, I'm not allowed to prevent my machine from becoming infected?
"use components of the software to run applications not running on the software;"
Does this include the bootloader? Might that not make multibooting only legal if you use the one from the other OS?
TBH, I was really looking forward to Vista. There's a lot of good stuff in there. The new EULA, and especially the device installation limits have put me right off. Depending on your definiton of what a "device" is, excepting the laptop, my copies of XP have been on anywhere from 2 to 20 "devices" each. I really don't care much for the Linux badlands, but I'm not seeing many other options here...
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[quote user="RayS"]
"publish the software for others to copy;"
That kind of makes things tricky for us admins. Does this prohibit having it on a network share? Ghost/similar images?
[/quote]
I assume a site/multi license would have a different policy. Even if you look at the different 'versions' they have different EULA's. For example the basic version disallows virtualization while the 'ultimate' version does not.
"use components of the software to run applications not running on the software;"
Does this include the bootloader? Might that not make multibooting only legal if you use the one from the other OS?
I think this would be more a hinderance to things like WINE if they wanted to support software written for Vista.
TBH, I was really looking forward to Vista. There's a lot of good stuff in there. The new EULA, and especially the device installation limits have put me right off. Depending on your definiton of what a "device" is, excepting the laptop, my copies of XP have been on anywhere from 2 to 20 "devices" each. I really don't care much for the Linux badlands, but I'm not seeing many other options here...
I was looking forward to Vista some years ago, but most of the cool stuff has been bled off. I'm happily running a couple different distro's of Linux. My only problem so far has been a rather big problem getting hardware acceleration from my laptops ATI card (X200 I think). I would say the most user friendly distro's to be Ubuntu/Kubuntu or Mepis. Although if you have a desire to really learn Linux grab a copy of Slackware.
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Section 15 may be unenforcable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
In any case it's an extremely arrogant attempt by Microsoft to make extra cash.
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Way off topic here, but does anyone else think that "Vista Eula" sounds like a swell place to retire?
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[quote user="Sgt. Zim"]
I am not a Microsoft-lover. I am also not a lawyer. That said, I can see what they were trying to stop with this clause, when you look at it in context:
8. SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. For more information, see http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/userights. You may not:
- work around any technical limitations in the software;
- reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation;
- use components of the software to run applications not running on the software;
- make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;
- publish the software for others to copy;
- rent, lease or lend the software; or
- use the software for commercial software hosting services.
I read this as a fairly standard attempt to stop users from "hacking", "cracking" or modifying it to remove things like DRM or Activation. That said, the wording is pretty vague, and could be used for nefarious purposes.
[/quote]
And thats the issue here. If you go to court as M$ you would win, if you want to disallow users to do things like installing a video codec, a device driver <insert-gigantic-long-list-of-useful-additions-to-windows>. If my mum would say that, I would certainly say "oh, she really wanted to protect it from beeing hacked". But you cannot do this if M$ says something like that. Never. They will turn it against you, no matter what they say today.
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Until such time as a court of law or act of parliament which has juristiction over me says otherwise, I will continue to consider EULAs as purely advisory.
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Unfortunately, according EULA, Vista isn't actually "sold", it's "licensed", so the first-sale limiting law doesn't apply.
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[quote user="PlasmaHH"][quote user="Sgt. Zim"]
I am not a Microsoft-lover. I am also not a lawyer. That said, I can see what they were trying to stop with this clause, when you look at it in context:
8. SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. For more information, see http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/userights. You may not:
- work around any technical limitations in the software;
- reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation;
- use components of the software to run applications not running on the software;
- make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;
- publish the software for others to copy;
- rent, lease or lend the software; or
- use the software for commercial software hosting services.
I read this as a fairly standard attempt to stop users from "hacking", "cracking" or modifying it to remove things like DRM or Activation. That said, the wording is pretty vague, and could be used for nefarious purposes.
[/quote]
And thats the issue here. If you go to court as M$ you would win, if you want to disallow users to do things like installing a video codec, a device driver <insert-gigantic-long-list-of-useful-additions-to-windows>. If my mum would say that, I would certainly say "oh, she really wanted to protect it from beeing hacked". But you cannot do this if M$ says something like that. Never. They will turn it against you, no matter what they say today.
[/quote]
Hmm. I've been accused of being too Anti-MS; I was trying to be more "open-minded."
The Vista EULA scares the shit out of me. I won't be purchasing a copy, and will be increasing my professional efforts to move away from the platform. The shame is that, professionally, Windows knowledge/skills are vital for most of us.
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[quote user="mallard"]Until such time as a court of law or act of parliament which has juristiction over me says otherwise, I will continue to consider EULAs as purely advisory.[/quote]I would agree with you completely. You can't agree to contract terms that you can't see at the time of purchase.
However, whatever your or my outlook on this is, it means squat if MS won't activate your copy of Windows, leaving you with an expensive but useless disc of plastic.
I also don't have the time, resources, or inclination to take the issue up in a court of law. Instead I have to sit back, see how others fare with it, and make my decision to move to Vista or not based on what actually happens.
Still sucks.
