Microsoft Backs Down on Windows 2000 EULA

nachoboy writes "After the fiasco surrounding the overly intrusive EULA for Windows 2000 SP3, it seems Microsoft has backed down a bit with the upcoming release of SP4. The section concerning automatic updates now states simply "You consent to the operation of these features, unless you choose to switch them off or not use them." The EULA then proceeds to list the five services liable to connect to the internet without explicit confirmation. A reference copy of the SP4 EULA may be found here. We can only hope for a similar move with Windows XP."

Comments

Too little, too late...

[krray]

This may be too little too late for us. With the release of SP3 for Windows 2000 "Professional" we went to a "code freeze" with Microsoft Windows (among other things).

With this SP we also decided it was time to completely ditch them from operations and have been rolling out Linux and Mac OS.X workstations as existing systems reached their EOL.

Fortunately we may actually use SP4 for the existing Windows boxes (about 35% left now) -- but our budget for Microsoft products has been placed at -0- per the board of directors.

Too little, too late... (fp :)

Re:Too little, too late...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya'all crack me up.

1) our core network has *ALWAYS* been Netware, BSD and now Linux.

2) Our revenue has been just fine with NEVER having a Microsoft server. Management sees the desktop as money time wasting pit with every reboot.

2a) Why is it my offer -- even directly to MICROSOFT -- of setting up 10 workstations for $10,000 has never been taken? The contract reads that for every crash over a one year period it'll cost $1,000. The catch: the pay back is not to exceed $20,000 (I am a betting man :)

2b) I've setup dozens of Linux servers under this contract.

2c) My expected revenue between now and year end is somewhere between 18 and 22 million. Suck on THAT.

Sorry boys, but REAL BUSINESS' are moving as far away from Windows as fast as they can. I personally drew the line in the sand with the release of OS.X for myself at home. Of course Linux still runs the house from the basement too.

Also interesting that those now on OS.X in the office have shown a noticable improvement in productivity too...

Re:Too little, too late...

[krray]

It didn't take us two years to decide Windows is full of security holes and problems. I personally knew that with Windows 95 (never deployed here -- stuck with WFW3.11).

The remains Windows boxes are primarily used for AutoCAD work. I've yet to come across a product that comes close to what we would expect for other platforms -- the exception being a outside-our-needs $40K package.

Those remaining Windows boxes have long ago been on a segmented private subnet with NO ACCESS what-so-ever to the Internet for obvious security reasons.

Frankly -- I don't give a rats ass what the rest of the world does (to a point -- we still need to share data). The "TCO" for Windows is a hell of a lot higher than Microsoft would like you to think it is. A whole LOT.

Even when Windows was the #1 desktop on our network there has never been one (1) virus infection or outbreak. Of course Outlook and Explorer were banned from day one (which helped :).

I'm still amazed by the Windows weenies out there -- isn't it interesting that a guy like me doesn't like Windows? 20 years experience "in the business", multiple computer science degrees along with accounting and business management for that matter... I like Netware, BSD, Solaris, Linux, OS/2, BeOS, and OS X among others -- it's just so obviously how fundamentally flawed Windows is.

But I'm sure I don't know shit or what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's it.
Too funny.

Wow

[Cackmobile]

To all the people who say what can we do; Here is a perfect example of the power of the people. We the consumers hold the power. We can stand up and fight corporate greed. From here we need to demand better software with less bugs.

I hate posting about M$. Last time i got modded to Flamebait. DOH!!!

Re:Wow

[TopShelf]

While this may be a bit overstated, it does seem like MS is paying more attention to customer feedback these days. Note the changes made to mollify small and medium-sized businesses related to software licenses, and the recent price cuts made to Office and SQL Server's Developer Edition. The recent controversy about the extreme measures they are taking to compete with Linux in the enterprise also points to a company that is feeling pressure to preserve its customer base. That's an entirely different posture than boldly taking on new areas and expanding market share. The next couple years (as the economy strengthens and IT spending resumes) should prove very interesting indeed...

Re:Wow

[pVoid]

I think you are watching too many x-files.

I think the previous EULA was worded that way so people were forced (by law) to update their machines, and not leave them unpatched for months. I think it was made that way so that Moft didn't end up with lawsuits (or bad rep) saying their machines weren't safe.

(I think ideally, they wanted all of the machines on the net to get patches as soon as they came out, so that once a bug was announced on a full disclosure list or the such, if they deemed it dangerous, they could get around to avoiding it).

But in the end, it comes down to an 'I think' versus 'you think' situation. And I think you are watching too many x-files.

(your argument of closed sourcedness is bs... have you read each and every line of source in your linux kernel? - trojan's are very easily detectable without source code, in fact they are more detectable without source code: via network analysis... if Moft were to put trojans in their updates, you would get 42 stories a day on /. about it - plus their respective duplicates)

Published benchmarks still "illegal?"

[mgcsinc]

This is a nice concession by microsoft, but what of the weird restrictions on benchmarking alluded to in the older slashdot article?

'You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the .NET Framework component of the OS Components to any third party without Microsoft's prior written approval.'

Re:Published benchmarks still "illegal?"

[mgcsinc]

Video card manufacturers could do this to keep from spending half their man hours on programming their drivers to trick benchmarks. Then again, this wouldn't fly to well, would it... If there's anything worse than feew people buying your product because it benchmarks poorly, it's no one buying your product because the industry press hates you.

so would SP4 meet HIPAA guidelines?

[clarkc3]

I remember there was a discusion about SP3 and where I worked that was one of the main reasons we held off installing it on our machines

Retroactively?

[ptaff]

Is the agreement on SP4 only touching the technology modified by this service pack?

If I agreed on SP3, can a further SP change my rights?

I mean, I already said yes to all that invasive stuff.

Seems like a PR-move for me.

Copyright?

[truthsearch]

Out of curiosity, isn't the EULA automatically protected under copyright law like everything else? Even without a copyright statement attached to it I'm not sure anyone is allowed to reproduce it without permission. I think it would have to explicitly give permission in the doc.

This is nice

[pulse2600]

I seriously believe that this is the result of constant pressure and bad PR Microsoft has been getting from techies like us. Even powerful, monopolistic companies like Microsoft must respond to the dissent of the public. We must continue to discuss our grievances while educating techies and non-techies alike about how things like EULAs and buggy software can affect our lives. This is the only way companies will be forced to make better products and treat their customers better.

Uh-huh

[kiwimate]

Posted Anonymous Coward

Makes me feel very comfortable insofar as the veracity of the rest of your post is concerned.

Do post some more details...for example:

* What is your core "real business"?
* How big is your company?
* How big is your network?
* How long has your company been established?

You get the gist...really, just some sort of detail that, say, might lead me to believe this is anything other than a rather poor troll.

I love 2a, by the way. How did you present your offer to Microsoft? (Was it a formal business proposition, or an open letter posted on the local "MS-SUX" mailing list?) To whom did you present it? What were they supposed to get out of it? (My goodness, I'm just shocked that Microsoft wasn't falling over itself to take up your little proposal involving a whopping ten -- count 'em! -- workstations.) To whom did you present the same Linux-server-based contract?

(And it still gets modded up as Interesting. Good ol' Slashdot...)

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you never looked at Windows Update enough to realize that you can control the order of the installation. Want to do driver updates first? No problem. Oh wait, it is easier to complain and blame Microsoft.

So what if doing the driver updates first causes a problem (with, say, DirectX)?

You can't know in advance which order to apply the patches to avoid problems. That's the problem. :) Dependancy checking might solve this problem, but it ain't there yet.

Re:As if the EULA mattered

[pmz]

They also have your IP address, time of day, frequency of Internet use, possibly your location (via traceroute), and what kinds of websites you are looking for. Based on the websites, they can even infer your age group, sex, and "secret habits".

Replying to myself.... I just realized that via whois lookup, they can potentially figure out who you work for and/or what ISP you use. If they have figured out those fingerprinting techniques, they might even be able to detect your LAN configuration (NAT, etc.).

All this for unintentially visiting a Microsoft website. The default msn.com IE home page achieves much of this, too, except most of the demographic data.

Geez, this is getting worse and worse...must stop thinking...

Windows Media Player 9 alters my files?

[eMartin]

I installed WMP 9 the other day, and the first thing I did was go through the settings to turn off all the "features" that I don't need.

One thing that I found interesting though, is that I unchecked the "Update my music files (WMA and MP3 files) by retrieving missing media information from the Internet" (which has an accompanying help link that explains that it would be used to add information to both the media library database and tags within the actual files), yet all the files that I played in WMP were actually still modified. Their modification dates and file sizes changed.

Now that is enough for me to decide not to use their software for playing my music, because the way that I see it, any info that is used by the media library (such as song ratings, number of times played, etc.) belongs in the separate database that it uses, and my files should not be changed unless I click a "save" or "apply" button somewhere.

So does anyone know what is being added to these files by WMP? I don't like the idea that it is changing my files just to add some stupid "This audio file was played by Windows Media Player" tag.

Disclosing URLs IS dangerous

[arth1]

It's not that easy to dismiss.

Example: A VPN user enters https://user@password:internalserver.company.com
However, the VPN line has gone down and the user happens to be on the Internet, where internalserver.company.com doesn't resolve. Or the local DNS server might have a temporary hiccup. Or a variety of other reasons might cause the lookup to fail.
IE then proceeds to send the URL to the search engine of choice. NOT good.

real business is not an AC...

[Archfeld]

Err 18 to 22 million is small time money as far as 'real business' is concerned. Don't get me wrong I am happy to see linux get a bigger market share and a foothold in business, but we do 18-22 million about every 60 minutes (projected year end revenues run in the 100 billions), and NO LINUX support vendor will come close to matching what M$ and IBM provide in personnel and equipment support. I hope things keep growing so that maybe someday it will happen but for now REAL BUSINESS, ie fortune 500 and better are NOT running their back offices on LINUX OR OSX, and as a former unix admin the thought of the general (L)user community having a unix/linux desktop terrifies me.
With the release of 2003 for priemier customers the performance gap is going to grow. I hope that Linus going to work full time on the kernel for a year will help close the gap on high end scalability.
On a side note we did tell SendMail where to go and are now moving to an OSS setup :)

now it's sun's turn: java 1.4.1+ has same problem

[Khopesh]

JDK-1.4.1 License, note Supplemental License Terms 5 and 6:

5. Notice of Automatic Software Updates from Sun. You acknowledge that the Software may automatically download, install, and execute applets, applications, software extensions, and updated versions of the Software from Sun ("Software Updates"), which may require you to accept updated terms and conditions for installation. If additional terms and conditions are not presented on installation, the Software Updates will be considered part of the Software and subject to the terms and conditions of the Agreement

6. Notice of Automatic Downloads. You acknowledge that, by your use of the Software and/or by requesting services that require use of the Software, the Software may automatically download, install, and execute software applications from sources other than Sun ("Other Software"). Sun makes no representations of a relationship of any kind to licensors of Other Software. ...

Java for Mozilla will require this!
that's right, mozilla 1.4final and up will need java 1.4.2+ (due to gcc3.2.x),
which means you need to agree to those terms if you want java. see mozilla bug 204236,
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204236
(bugzilla blocks direct links from slashdot; you'll have to copy & paste.)