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Windows XP EULA Compared to GPL
cranos writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running an article comparing the XP EULA to the GPL. Basically it's just reinforcing what we already knew but it could be a nice little piece to show your PHB next time."
probably as protection from DMCA.
A study [...] has put paid to the common myth that GPL software cannot be included in proprietary software without the entire mix having to necessarily be released under the GPL.
[...]
The study pointed out that if a developer wanted to create free or open source software which he or she wanted to use in proprietary software without that proprietary software itself coming under the GPL, they could use the Library GPL, which was specifically designed for this purpose.
In other words, the GPL is less restrictive than the XP EULA because there's an entirely different license called LGPL which is more permissive.
In other news, North Korea has a stronger economy than Russia, because South Korea has a strong economy.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
"-copying was prohibited" -- Duh. It's a retail product that is required to run other retail products such as games.
"-could be used only on one computer with a maximum of 2 processors" -- They have a premium product that works with more than 2 processors, fair game.
"-cannot be used as a webserver or fileserver" -- Gray area. I want to read the exact wording of this point here before I issue a judgement. However, my initial reaction is that they're protecting themselves from people who figure out how to unlock these features. For example, IIS on XP Home has a limitation of 10 simultaneous connections. Somebody could probably hack that. On the surface, it appears as though they want to protect their product so you can buy the more expensive one to get those features. Put your pitchforks down, it's a common business practice to sell premium products with better features.
"-required registration after 30 days" -- It sucks, but it's legit. This is their protection system in place to prevent copying.
"-could stop working if hardware changes were made" -- Again, part of the protection system to guarantee they didn't just swap machines.
"-updates could change the EULA if the company so wished" -- Yeah because things have a way of being twisted, which I suspect happened in this 'analysis'.
"-could be transferred to another user only once" -- This probably has more to do with how their registration system works. If you think about how Windows was pirated before with the registration codes flying aruond, their registration system probably keeps track of those numbers. If the same number is flown around it raises a red flag and the system won't work. This is a problem if somebody thought they were buying something legitimately off of Ebay or something. The idea of that arrangement is probably to convince people to keep that to a minimum as it'd be very difficult to manage.
"-the new user must agree to the license terms (no specification how this could be achieved)" -- No specification on how this could be achieved? Oh I dunno, by USING it? The point here is that XP could be resold without the EULA. It's the seller's responsbility to make sure the buyer is aware there is one. MS is trying to cover their own butt here becuase of the obvious loophole around the EULA.
"-imposes limitations on reverse engineering" -- So people don't crack their protection scheme, commno practice...
"-gives Microsoft rights to collect information about the system and the its use" -- They have to for the registration process to work. It looks at your hardware config to make sure Windows didn't magically appear on somebody else's machine.
"-gives Microsoft the right to supply this information to other organisations" -- That sucks. It's probably part of the Passport thing. Common business practice, but that's pretty annoying. I'm sick of junk mail. (Although one could say "This is in case MS gets split up..." heh.)
"-gives Microsoft the right to make changes to the computer without having to ask." -- Windows XP comes with the Automatic Update tool to keep IE and related products up to date with the latest patches to thwart exploits. This is on by default. You guys complain about MS's vulnerabilities etc, so when they take a step to fix it they're the bad guy? Whatever.
"-warranty for the first 90 days" -- Duh.
"-fixes, updates or patches carry no warranty" -- Duh. Shit happens in the software world. Too many people using one product, whaddya expect?
What's really stupid about this whole story is that they're comparing a retail product to one intended to be given away freely. It doesn't have copy protection schemes or premium upgrades available. Of course it's not going to have any of that junk!
I give this story a +5, Troll. Not only was comparing it to a completely different l
"Derp de derp."
The GPL put kiddie porn on my computer.