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."

Comments

Re:Some rights can't be signed away.

[sphealey]

It wouldn't surprise me if the audit clause was upheld, but clause 14.4 (which limits your recourse to legal remedy) would just be laughed away if it was ever presented in court.

Unfortunately, that turns out not to be the case. If you have ever traded stocks, you signed a similar document when you opened your account with your stockbroker. The courts have consistently upheld these agreements. Employees of stockbrokers sign the same agreement, and the courts have held that these agreements supercede just about any federal law as well. For example, employees of stockbrokers cannot sue their employer for racial discrimination in hiring/promotions, but must submit to arbitration instead. Since the arbitration panels are selected by "industry peers", which is to say the management of other financial employers, the employee doesn't have much of a chance.

sPh

This isn't the first time...

[pedro]

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!

Re:Anyone remember how cool Borland used to be?

[Monkelectric]

I went and dug up some of my old turbo c++ and turbo debugger and tools boxes :)

Here's a jpeg of the license lic.jpg

Its about 300k modem users :) ME

True, and more...

[GCP]

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.