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Microsoft Pirating Their Own Software?
14ghz writes "Microsoft gave out copies of .NET Visual Studio Pro to attendees of the Microsoft .NET Student Tour. Despite the discs saying "UNLICENSED
SOFTWARE -- Illegal without separate license from Microsoft", the freebie didn't contain any license document, and one guy decided to ask the MS conference rep about it. Read the in-progress story."
Thats an EULA (End User Liscence Agreement) not the actuall liscence itself, which is a piece of paper with the equivalent of a serial number and some leagal jargon.
What happens if the student installs it on his (or the universitie's or their workplace) PC, and the BSA shows up?
The dude who posted the article should have had the common decency to obscure the name of the person at Microsoft that he was corresonding with. I have had my name posted on the internet with correspondance I made on behalf of my employer and it always makes me uncomfortable.
Further, the guy is probably some frontline peon who really has no control over anything there and has only been given the vaguest of guidelines on how to operate. No sense sticking his name out on the net for future harassment or embarassment.
I really think doing that was a bad move and anyone in the tech industry should have the common decency not to do that to a colleague.
Even if it's closer to false advertising, because there isn't any direct profit going to MS from the distribution of the software, this "problem" is a non-starter.
What MS is trying to do is to create a viable developer base among students in order to facilitate later corporate acceptance of .NET, and they're not going to get upset about dinky shit like this -- and neither will any court -- as long as that objective is met. This tactic is nothing new, illegal, surprising or interesting.
It is up to Microsoft how and to whom they license the software but this guy and 500 others did not get a license of any kind, just a disk.
He could have downloaded this off of Kazaa or somewhere.
What happens when the company or school he is at gets audited 6 months from now? Does he have to pay up for a license? If MS had given him a piece of paper that said 1 non transferable license free for non-commercial use he could wip the paper out and show the auditors. Now he has to erase the software from his computer or pay up if he gets audited. MS is being lazy. If they want the rules to protect their revenue stream then they have to stick to the rules themselves.
I work for a major retail computer chain. We used to have training events with all kinds of software vendors (microsoft, mcafee, mgi, datavis, roxio, etc.) and they used to give out all kinds of free software so that we could try thier products in hopes that if we used them we would reccommend the software to our customers. Now, due to the current economy a lot of these training events have stopped, but even at the ones that still do occur (microsoft included) we dont get NEARLY the amount of handouts that we used to. Again, it could probably be argued that this is due to economic conditions, and I would agree if they were handing out keyboards or processors, but for the cost of them to manufacture a CD they dont lose money as compared to what they will make on our reccomendations to customers.
Anyway, back to my point. It seems to me that this guy is just trying to cause trouble for troubles sake, OR is trying to prove a point with regards to liscencing laws. While I agree with the sentiments, I DO NOT agree with the ammunition he is using for his fight.
All he is effectively doing is making these companies more gunshy to hand out free software to resellers like myself, or anyone else who attends training events like the one he did to get his software. The companies wont want to deal with a deluge of email like this, or go throught the trouble of making special key sets for promotional NFR (not for resale) software, etc. Actually, we USED to get software that was stamped NFR all over it, but they stopped this and started handing out "real" versions under volume lisences because there were more costs involved with producing NFR sets rather than using existing stock.
Youre looking a gift horse in the mouth and will end up ruining things for yourself and everyone else just to prove a point!
Yeah, but when the BSA comes in, sees you have a copy of MS software, but no license?
.. but it'd be your ass on the line if anybody contacted Leonard Publishing about your supposedly 'legal' pirated sheet music. Of course the owner of the copyright can let you have use of it for free, but if they dont give you legal proof that you own it, they could be responsible for getting you in legal trouble when an entirely seperate entity wants to check on the validity of what you own.
Considering they dont consider owning the original CD proof that you own it, I don't think they'll consider an email from an MS rep saying "its okay" proof that you own it.
Just because an MS employee says 'its okay' does not cover your ass in court if MS's *other hand* comes knocking at the door looking for proof that you indeed own licenses for the software you have installed on your computer.
The point is, the software/CD is worth nothing. The license is worth something. And you need the license to use the CD. Anything else could be a little bit of unintentional BSA-enforced entrapment.
I don't think it'd really happen, but the guy has a very very good point. It'd be like a sheet music service giving you photocopies of some sheet music (ie, no proof you own them), and saying "its okay, go ahead"
"Old man yells at systemd"
Microsoft isn't at fault here. Good grief, all everyone here does is complain about Microsoft's draconian licensing system, then when they try and give something away they get jumped all over.
I mean, geeze. In that e-mail exchange the story linked to, one participant wasn't making sense, and it certainly wasn't Microsoft. 'Here, have this software' 'There's no license' 'Well you can use it for non-commercial use' 'Just this software?'. That last one kills me; he knows perfectly well that 'for that single piece of software we gave you you don't need a license' doesn't imply in any way that he doesn't need a license for ANY Microsoft software ever again. Don't try to make it sound like MS is being all contradictory.
Think about it.
Spammers usually define spamming as "That which they do not do."
Here, we have a case where Microsoft is simply redefining software piracy as "That which we do not do."
Since Microsoft has also been known to spam, and has tried to weaken anti-spam laws in their favor, it comes as no surprise to me that the left hand has no idea of what the right is doing when it comes to handing out software.
Spammer logic. Amazing -- and kind of frightening -- how contagious it is.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies