Microsoft XP License Prohibits VNC

jhml writes: "Looks like the monopoly muscles are flexing. According to this article in Infoworld, the XP license prohibits products other than from Microsoft's from being used to remotely control an XP workstation. So ... guess they were having a little trouble with VNC being widely used?"

Comments

That doesn't mean VNC won't run.

[Bonker]

I was curious, so I installed XP a little while back. Ran just fine with two different versions of VNC

What about PCAnywhere?

[Nailer]

PCAnywhere 10.5 includes Windows XP support, and IIRC still uses its own protocol / mechanism for doing so, rather than MS RDP. Symantec have the Designed for Windows XP logo on the PCA box.

How is this affected?

Re:No, the point is that NO ONE

[Zeinfeld]

has found a click thru license that has been upheld in court. They can demand all kinds of things but what the courts let them get away with is entirely a different matter

Err not quite, there is one case although the precedent is fairly weak, the case was pretty narrow and was not appealled. The case involved a CDROM with telephone numbers on that would not be copyrightable as a mere aggregation of non copyright data. The court held that the shrinkwrap license established a contractual agreement not to copy the data, although the precedent is weak since there were other issues involved.

Also in the DeCSS case the existence of a shrinkwrap license was considered significant, although it was not decisive in that particular case.

That is beside the point in this case however since the clause would probably constitute an illegal restraint of trade if interpreted as in the article. Also the courts are much more willing to interpret clickwrap as establishing the type of copyright protections that they are used to in other media, than they are to allow the introduction of extraneous terms.

Slashdot is wrong as usual.

[duffbeer703]

VNC isn't the application that would be affected here. VNC is basically a free version of PC Anywhere.

The application in trouble here is rdesktop, which allows you to connect a Windows Terminal Server or MetaFrame server over the RDP protocol.

MSFT doesn't want you to run MS apps on a server without owning a MSFT product. A CAL costs like $30, while a windows xp pro license is like 200.

I bet this sort of licensing restriction is illegal. I'm sure that IBM and Unisys had similar lines in their EULA's 20 years ago with mainframe systems to force companies to purchase expensive green screen terminals. Today people routinely connect with IBM 3270 emulators without any legal hassles.

Re:GPL Prohibits VNC

[MajroMax]

Screenshots are derived works (they contain copyrighted bitmaps). Under the GPL you cannot copy derived works without distributing the source code to those derived works.

(Score: -1, incorrect, troll, flamebait.)

A) Screenshots are products of the program. They are "derived works" in the sense of Copyright law, but they are only derived in the sense that the .bmp files you produce from are derived works -- they are yours to do with as you please unless you were specificially forbidden from doing it by the license of the creator. Which doesn't apply here -- quoth the GPL:

and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).

Since the screenshot isn't of the GNOME source, it's not covered by the GPL.

B) Even if the GPL did cover the output of the program, which it doesn't, use of VNC still wouldn't be prohibited. The GPL only mandates that you release source to people whom you have given binaries, and that only if they requested it -- if you're using VNC for personal use or internal to your company, no one will be requesting the source so you're fine. If you're allowing complete strangers VNC access, then you have greater problems than possible GPL violations.

Re:No, the point is that NO ONE

[studerby]

has found a click thru license that has been upheld in court. They can demand all kinds of things but what the courts let them get away with is entirely a different matter

has found a click thru license that has been upheld in court. They can demand all kinds of things but what the courts let them get away with is entirely a different matter

The case you're talking about is ProCD,Inc. vs. Zeidenberg, and your remarks are close but a bit off. Because white-page phonebook listings and similar "brute-force" database lists that are the product of hard work but no creativity are *not* protected by copyright (The Suprmeme Court's "Feist v. Rural Telephone" decision), ProCd was able to gather up phone books and create a national phone CD. Zeidenberg then took the CD, created a web interface to the data and was sued by ProCD.

Zeidenberg won in District Court, ProCd appealed to the 7th Circuit and lost there, and Zeidenberg did not appeal to the Supreme Court. In the 7th circuit ruling, Judge Easterbrook specifically reversed the trial court on the enforceability of shrinkwrap licenses. The way courts do things, this precedent is binding in all the District Courts in the 7th Circuit, but not elsewhere.

From a copyright perspective, this decision is ludicrous, because it in essence says that any publisher can slap a "contract" on something (book, cd, etc.) and thereby void any rights consumers otherwise might have, but until someone with bucks take the matter to the Supreme Court, we lack a definitive answer to the problem...

Re:The accessing machine must have a liscense

[Calle Ballz]

Lemme highlight the whole thing, so that you can read the whole thing:

Microsoft's XP license agreement says, "Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display, or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product."

What microsoft wants here is everyone who uses XP to have a license for the device they are using XP on. So if your friend sets up a WinXP box with a VNC server, microsoft doesn't want you "enjoying the functionality and features of XP" from your win98 box, win2k box, linux box or your toaster. Microsoft feels that people may not upgrade from win98 to XP because they might use VNC to access a seperate, 3rd party XP machine. It's pretty gay, but unless you are running XP on all machines involved... you are breaking their license.

Don't buy XP, don't worry about.

They can claim anything they want..

[defile]

That still doesn't change the fact that their EULA is not legally enforcable.

The whole big deal with UCITA is to make these shrinkwrap/clickthrough licenses legally binding. Otherwise it's just bullshit.

Would they sue you over it? Maybe, but they probably won't win on purely legal grounds.

VNC is not restricted, in my interpretation

[Webmoth]

OK, this is so far down on the list nobody will read it, but here goes...

I don't think that VNC is the issue here, because the EULA seems to be prohibiting running multiple instances of a program on separate displays. This is not what VNC is on the Windows platform: VNC is simply showing one instance on multiple displays.

In this sense, VNC is no different than having a monitor splitter (like stores often have to showcase their monitor selection, being driven by one computer running XP).

I have to wonder: is Microsoft's next tactic going to be requiring a separate license for each pair of EYES viewing their product?