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Borland Backs Down
Danborg writes: "Borland has backed down from its horrible Kylix/JBuilder license after all the bad press they received on Slashdot and Freshmeat. You may now all resume using Kylix and/or JBuilder. Seriously though, it's good to see a company respond to the voices of the online community, and admit it made a mistake. Good job Borland."
Now that the licensing scandal is over, maybe Borland can find time to focus their efforts on getting rid of all the bugs in Kylix/CLX. I've used them for some time and have been pretty frustrated. Checkout freeclx.sourceforge.net. That's the repository where CLX (Kylix's programming language) is maintained. There haven't been updates in weeks. Nobody even bothers to submit bug reports there since they are ignored.
That's the problem. Everyone has licenses like that. It's "industry standard boilerplate". Oh well, as long as we continue to pay close attention we can force some companies to be reasonable. Others, however, are not so susceptible to pressure.
Best Slashdot Co
"Industry standard boilerplate"
Also reads as "Lawyers just cut and paste and didn't actually bother working out what it was for"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
(Emphasis mine) So private customers do get the same EULA, with a different wording?
I don't understand why this was presented as backing down as opposed to a mistake as to which license gets associated with which product.
There's no reason not to believe them that this was an error and had not reflected a conscious effort to change licenses on individual instances.
Think about it: an independent developer would HAVE to employ a lawyer to deal with licensing schemes like Borland's Enterprise license.
This is not industry standard boilerplate, but lazyness: they're avoid working with customers to figure out better licensing terms.
You, jerw134 have won eternal fame among your fellow slashdotters for this accurate prediction !
karma capped
Until we see the new license this isn't a victory.
Is the mistake over the audit clause, waving jury trials or both?
M.
It doesn't mention which bits they are intending to change... I wonder if the 'not produce competing products' part is included?
Currently, you couldn't legally use C++ Builder or Delphi/Kylix to write a database engine or an IDE, as I understand it...
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Microsoft decided that they were getting to much bad press from slashdot and now instead of stealing money, crushing companies, and controlling the government they are petting bunnies, saving orphans, and planting tree.
Also, the US gov't, in a move to improve their image on slashdot, decided to revoke all copyright law, examine patents more closely, and actually read the constitution.
If I were an enterprise volume customer, I would consider the terms of that licesnes to be onerous. Those terms are just wrong no matter who you are. A software license forcing you to submit to binding arbitration and random audits?! What a ridiculous thing. Next thing you know, cleaning product manufacturers will be coming with detailed sets of instructions and licenses requiring you to pay to have someone look over your shoulder to make sure you follow them whenever they like.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
> before someone else does and calls me a "lamer" or something...
Actually, I was going to call it a Freudian slip.
-
Typically, it is up to the staff to catch those mistakes and argue with the staff lawyer to make sure it applies to situation. That rarely happens for a lot of reasons. Often I would get press releases for 5a.m. the next morning at 7a.m. the day of.
How in the world are developers, staff writers supposed to read it thoroughly? They can't. The mentality of the lawyers I've met is "be more restrictive" and ease up if people complain vs "be less restrictive." It's good the community spoke up and complained. That's part of the natural process. If all licenses were not restrictive, how would lawyers make a living or warrant their services :)
It is A Good Ting (tm) that Borland actualy changed the license.
It makes them seem to care for their customer base (like me, a customer that bought Kylix), when they (we) politely cry "You Morons! what kind of terms are those? And next, you'll ask for my first born, right?" in their face -actualy, the letter that I sent was more polite. And had no 'F' words on it-.
But it is also A Bad Thing (tm).
Yes, they published a license that was way over the top. Specialy, when everyone and their mother seems to be asking for a much limited set of private personal freedom and right (for our own protection, of course). And, of course, a good corporation must mimmic the government. So, let's throw some lawyers to the License Dept. and make them review the licensing terms, so we can count on unexpected revenues if nobody discovers what we have done.
Let's face it. Borland is just YAC (Yet Another Corporation). Their goal is to make money. No matter what.
Or so I see it.
How do you see it?
You may now all resume using Kylix and/or JBuilder.
;)
WOW... now i can start wearing my kylix/borland t-shirt again... I really liked it
Don't Panic
No. It's the employment of lawyers with nothing better to do than to screw with a good thing.
Who remembers the Borland license of TP5 days when the software was to be treated like a book?
I think they called it their "No Nonsense License Agreement" or something like that. We didn't complain about that one as it was pretty fair. I heard it was crafted by the software engineers themselves. Why can't a license like that become the industry boilerplate?
Unfortunately, the company grew and they hired laywers who had to make it virtually unreadable to anyone without a legal background. It went downhill from there. Lawyers server a purpose in a software company, like protecting it from litigation and protection of intellectual property. But, when it comes to licensing, they need to listen to the engineers and development community and license accordingly.
A few years ago, there was a similar frackus about, I think it was the Borland C++ license. They had a "non-compete" clause there. That was promptly removed after the application of public pressure. You'd think they learn from that. Perhaps, if they're smart, they'll pass the license by their real users for review and comment before putting it in the box.
There's still a strong push on the Borland NG to have the license reverted to one like the NNLA. Let's see what happens. Borland has a tendency to react favorably to its developer community.
RD
I dunno - basically, this looks like an "Oops, you caught me" more than anything else. Accepting their explanation at face value makes me wonder how many times any developer at a large site has submitted themselves to these terms.
I think it would be wise (and maybe someone has done this) to have EULAs from all sorts of companies examined closely by laywers (not IANALs, real Juris Doctor lawyers). I think we need to see the revised non-enterprise license from Borland. For those of us who bring in personal laptops to the office, how does an enterprise license apply to us? How about telecommuters? Is there some sort of paper wall between the portion of my home PC that dials into work and allows me to work from home, and the rest of my home PC with its ripped MP3s, software "borrowed" from friends and collections of pr0n? How about the USB harddrive that holds MP3s that I take to work to listen to tunes while I work? Does that become "infected" by the enterprise license?
There are enough EULA's to choke a horse out there, and a lot of people (me included) have a tendency to buzz right by them on the way to an install. Add to that the variety of source licences and other varied licenses that we submit to and use, it makes for a nice legal morass that a lot of folks do not really comprehend until they get called on it, when it is too late. Just take a moment and try to count the number of legal agreements that you have made to get your PC to the point it is right now. How many? 100? 1000?
Is there anyone out there who has created a website specifically to deal with these sorts of things? A technologically inclined lawyer with a whole lotta time on their hands? Someone to offer all us legal dilettantes and wannabees some guidelines and advice regarding the various legal "boilerplate" to which we submit ourselves every day?
Some people would claim that the producer has more power than the consumer in this situation, but if consumers find that conditions a particular producer's SFC too onerous then they are free to switch to a competitor's product which has more favourable terms (i.e. dump Kylix/JBuilder for something else which is exactly what I'm sure many people were planning to do).
Whether people actually pay any attention to SFC's is another matter entirely. Steven E. Rhoades writes in The Economist's View of the World that in the mid 1980's one bank inserted a sentence in the midst of its disclosure statement offering ten dollars to anyone who sent in a postcard with the words "Regulation E" on it. Out of 115,000 recipients of the statement not one responded.
That's quite a memory you have there snake_dad.
8 29 491
And if you're too bored to search for jerw134, this is the relevant thread:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26121&cid=2
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Click here or here.
Riiight - I was out of the room, the dog ate it, I was putting *back* the cookies, etc.
Folks don't believe the statement 'cause its not believable. License's legal wording doesn't just get thrown together by some minor "administrative assistant" and then sent out. It's reviewed, several times, at different levels. This is the legally binding contract the company has to honor - trust me it gets read, discussed, debated. Borland knew what it was doing.
Furthermore the line that these were items meant for their enterprise licenses is also a load of hooey. Some of those provisos are ones NOBODY sensible would sign off on, PARTICULARLY large corporations with their own lawyers reading this stuff and looking to protect the companies privacy. The only way those points would ever show up in a big contract would be as negotiating points that can be used to make Borland look reasonable on other more legitimate terms ("We dropped the X and the Y for you folks, at least let us keep the Z!")
Frankly the "Open Letter" is an exercise in damage control and deceit.
It was an accident all right - that it caused so much furor and now they're trying to make excuses and distance themselves. I'm sure the next few licenses they'll be treading softly but I've no doubt we've seen the goals of at least some folks within Borland. If they remember the spanking will have to be seen but I for one wouldn't commit to Borland products without a great deal of unease.
Finally, and on the VERY off possibility this was an honest mistake then what kind of organization lets something this important "slip through"? Are they venal or profoundly badly run - gee which would I prefer my tool developer be?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.