MS FrontPage Restricts Free Speech II (It's True!)

A mild controvery occured yesterday in a story claiming Microsoft prohibits anti-ms speech if you use Frontpage. Here is a followup submitted by Reyacta from the original author: "Several readers have told me their EULA for FrontPage 2002 does not contain the no-disparaging-MS term, or that the term only applies to the FrontPage logo or to the Web components like the MSNBC news headline component. Just to be sure, this afternoon I went down to the store and bought a copy of FrontPage 2002 myself. In the box was the "Microsoft Frontpage 2002" license on a four-page folded sheet, titled "End- User License Agreement For Microsoft Software." Under Section #1, Grant of License, the second paragraph headed "Restrictions" states in part: "You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services, infringe any intellectual property or other rights of these parties, violate any state, federal or international law, or promote racism, hatred or pornography." (Not only a stunning example of legal overreaching, in my opinion, but very poor grammar as well.) It appears to me to clearly apply to use of the program as a whole and not just the logo or Web components. I suspect that there are different versions of the EULA of FrontPage 2002. Perhaps the license was updated for the most recent SKU, or versions obtained through different channels don't yet have it. I'm going to try to get Microsoft to clarify where this EULA does and doesn't appear, but I'm not sure they will be very anxious to provide me with that information. Reply to Ed Foster."

Comments

...Fool me twice, shame on me...

[frankie]

Every time one of these stories comes out, an apologist says "I'm sure it was just an accident, their lawyers/marketers/whoever made a dumb mistake".

• Passport saying "all your info belongs to us"
• racketeering of digital photos
• Smart Tags
• Astroturfing
• etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

And this is just the ones where they got caught, the mainstream media cared, and they backed down. There's plenty of other shit they do that slides by.

Sorry, but after the same exact set of events repeats itself dozens of times over the course of a decade, you can't chalk it up to accident any more. This is malice.

encarta:

[kilgore_47]

As sugested, I checked Microsoft's definition of Microsoft.

The Encarta Dictionary says "No matches found for: Microsoft"

The Encarta Encyclopedia, however, has a much more fitting definition:
"Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a0005', Invalid procedure call or argument, /shared/spot/xmlsearchcore.inc, line 572 "
I think that really sums it up!

Re:what next?

[mcc]

To add slightly to what the others replying to your post have already said by reiterating what has been posted on slashdot many, many times before:

Unless "all the software you write with it" means "all the software that you create that incorporates source code taken from the source code of Linux" (and i would assume it is not, for i would expect that the prestigious StreetLawyer would not be one to make a grammar ambiguity mistake):

1. Such a license as you describe would not be compatible with the GPL, as the GPL demands that no use restrictions may be added to GPLed software. (See GPL section 6). So unless one individual entity has the copyright at this point to relicense the entire Linux kernel (unlikely-- *does* anyone? do you have to sign over your copyright to someone specific when you submit a kernel patch?), such a restriction (stating that if you write software using Linux you must open-source it) could not be added unless it were added to the GPL itself.
2. Please note that linux and other such GPLed products are always released under a certain version of the GPL, with the addition of the phrase "or at your option a later version of the GPL". Hence, even if new restrictions are added to the GPL, this does not affect GPLed code already out there.

   In either of the cases described above, you are still free to simply use the older, less restrictively licensed versions of Linux already out there, as the GPL does not allow anyone to retract a license they have given someone under the terms of the GPL.