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Borland Kylix/JBuilder License Reviewed
DJFelix writes: "I'm probably the billionth person to submit this story, but T.J. Duchene has posted a horrifying review of Borland's license for Kylix and JBuilder 5. The license requires giving Borland the right to enter your property, search your systems and records for license compliance. The license also requires the waiving of a jury trial by all parties for all suits including class action suits. This type of gestapo licensing will not be accepted by even the most hardcore anti open-source companies. Send an e-mail to pr@borland.com to voice your concern."
Checkout NetBeans. It's an IDE that has a lot of good features and it is developed under an open source license (SPL). It works under both Windows and Linux. I have used for about a month and the only thing that I personally think is missing is good support for projects. It includes Tomcat so you can run your JSP/servlets directly from the IDE.
Here is the text of the license agreement. I have been unable to locate this license agreement on Borland's website, so here is the link to freshmeat's mirror of it:
http://freshmeat.net/.misc/borland-license.txt
http://freshmeat.net/.misc/borland-license.txt
sPh
they've floated an onerous licensing scheme.
Anyone remember that period in the 80's when they tried to charge a license fee for their _runtime libraries_?
If you wanted to distribute an app you'd written using one of their compilers, you'd pay up front, then be charged a per unit royalty.
Three guesses how well that boneheaded idea went over with the developer community!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Borland hosts numerous newsgroups at [forums.inprise.com] for their products. I think a few well-worded posts in each of the appropriate newsgroups would get their attention and many of their customers' attention. Keep in mind that they probably moderate these groups.
Here's a jpeg of the license lic.jpg
Its about 300k modem users :)
ME
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
You have to understand that what's written in one of these licence agreements and your actual, enforceable terms of contract are not the same at all.
The US courts always take into account the relative legal sophistication of the parties to a contract, as well as who actually wrote the contract vs. who simply clicked "I agree". A corporate lawyer may put it in the contract, and a consumer may "agree" (in any form), yet that doesn't make it so, and the lawyer has no illusions about that.
Because of the court's inherent bias based on the legal sophistication of the parties, the more sophisticated you are, the scarier the contract you have to write. The court will tell a company, "you can't claim that right now if you didn't claim it originally," but they won't say that to the consumer.
I work for a company that agressively enforces anti-piracy provisions. I don't know of a single case of a raid on an individual. We also conduct raids, but always against large-scale pirates. We either have a search warrant or we ask them to invite us in.
You may be amazed that a pirate would invite us in, but we get in by promising (honestly) much lower financial penalties if they let us in voluntarily. They know we're telling the truth because these guys are never just simple consumers who put one copy on all of his home machines. These guys are always large-scale pirates -- often serious guys with guns -- and they know the rules of the piracy game.
The contracts are written with teeth for these guys, and the courts enforce them against pros like these, but for consumers they're little more than reminders not to give away free copies.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Um, no. Ever hear of a non-disclosure agreement? A right being inalienable means that noone else can take it way; with many (although not all) rights, you can agree not to exercise it and, yes, expect to have that agreement enforced..
yes but you didnt need to sign that NDA. the dev environments for palmpilots were free before palm went all paranoid and locked up the debug ROMs.
While waiting to close on a mortgage refinance this summer I asked my attorney about the "right to enter and inspect" provision in Microsoft's license. What he said was: "Well, they do have it in the license agreement, but they still need a cop and a warrant to force their way into my house." He then reminded me that to get a warrant the officers requesting it must have some sort of evidence of a crime to proceed.
He then went on to say that the true purpose of the clause is to give them something to sue over. If you agree in the license to let them search your house, then don't let them search, they might not have enough info to sue or have you arrested for software piracy, but they can still sue for breach of contract.
This doesn't make the clause's presence in the license kosher, but it made me aware that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer probably aren't going to show up at my house with machine guns in hand to kick the door in and inspect my network.
Who did what now?
Section 117 of the Copyright Act was supposed to prevent this kind of idiocy by clarifying that users can make copies of software if that is an "essential step" in its use (like copying to a hard drive or RAM). Unfortunately as this article shows, copyright holders have managed to convince some judges that the law doesn't mean what it says.
It would be great if the EFF could take up this issue, although I suppose they have their hands full at the moment dealing with other insane copyright laws.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
" Actually these arbitration clauses sometimes exist in a contract to protect the consumer or employee in cases where a lawsuit would be practically impossible for the individual to undertake."
How would a stacked arbitration panel consisting of other business owners in the same field help an employee? If they find for the employee then they encourage the same type of action in their own firms. They are going to rubberstamp a big red NO on everything and find for the corporation no matter how bad the conduct was. It's not like you can appeal or anything.
War is necrophilia.
Not only is their License stupid but their Kylix 2.0 product registration is ludicrous. In fact it is not a "Product Registration" at all. It's more a silly attempt at "copy protection" that is driving honest customers away. I know because my school purchased a license certificate for 40 licenses. You'd think that we'd register once and that would be that... but NO WAY! Borland's absurd resistration scheme requires each student to register. This means we have to give our s/n and key to all students who use out lab. Not only that but when a student switches to another Linux box he finds he must register again! This is because we have each student's home directory NFS'd from a central server. Borland's support and marketing people have been no help at all in solving this problem. We've had no choice but to return their product and not teach Kylix at out school. It's too bad because we really like Kylix and thought we were helping Borland by teaching developers to use their product.
John Selmys
Seneca College
Toronto, ON CANADA