Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Improves Its Licensing Terms
prostoalex writes "Microsoft offers to pick up the legal tab, in case anyone gets pulled to court for using its products. News dot com dot com has a rather informative outline of new policies: Microsoft will cover unlimited expenses on injury and infringement claims, the company quadrupled the warranty on its products to a 12-month length, and the companies audited for licensing compliance will now get a 30-day warning instead of 15-day one."
Where is coverage for security issues?
M.B.
The slashdot community will love this, until Microsoft cites it in the next legal battle theyre stuck in as a sign that they would like to protect consumers, at which point it will have been an evil ploy...
With the SCO suit, there's been a shift of attention : non open source companies assume legal risks for you, while open source software do not, thus explaining the difference in costs between the 2 types of offering.
See also heated thread regarding Hibernate on www.theserverside.com.
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
What can I say? I'm overwhelmed. Microsoft must be taking this SCO business seriously. They already have a SCO license.
:)
Notice that Microsoft limits their liability to actual lawsuits. Not bugs, or security holes, or any type of damages that you may assess running their software. In that case, you are still stuck.
And I doubt even SCO is dumb enough to try to sue anyone because they are running MS software. That's to big of a opponent for them.
-Brent
How will anyone be able to prove infringement if it's close source?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
With its new contract, Microsoft is effectively promising customers it will insulate them from those kind of messy legal problems.
We all knew that Microsoft considered Linux a threat, but this is the first positive "captilalistic competitiveness" move I've seen on Microsoft's part. It seems that Linux is pushing Microsoft to improve its standards in order to compete more. That's one positive thing through this whole mess, Microsoft is actually forced to compete for our business now.
--Clint
Well, the bigger question is this:
If I buy Microsoft XP Pro for ~ $300, does that mean they will only cover $300 in legal costs? So, I get to sit down at the lawyers office, ask for my free bottle of water, and get about 3 sentences out of my mouth before the real clock starts...
I saw a previous post like this that was joking, but you actually appear to be serious.
Of course not, MS is simply saying if they will pick up the tab if the USE OF THEIR PRODUCT is the issue. If the issue is piracy, or hacking, then it does not matter that you used their product in the act.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
One of the arguments regarding the SCO case has been that Linux users are at risk, but that's not any different than users of any other OS. To say that Linux is some kind of special exception, is just dishonest.
Or rather, it was dishonest. But now MS is setting itself apart. Microsoft has found a way to use their most important asset (not technology, not their employees, not their products -- just their big fat wad of cash) to differentiate themselves from all the others.
Also, this does something else. This is the first time I have ever heard of something in Microsoft EULAs that is actually for the user. Instead of take, take, take, the agreement would actually be something-for-something. To date, only a tiny fraction of their users actually bother to license their software. Most just buy it. But this could change that.
The big question becomes: is this all bullshit? Are software users really liable for the behavior of third parties? When you put it that way, it seems ridiculous. But software has function -- it does stuff. If your computer does something in violation of some patent, it's your agent that is doing it, at your direction, on your behalf. Is it relevant that someone else gave the instructions on how to do it? I can look up a patent in a database and quote it to you, but if you then follow those directions that I gave you, you're the one who is violating the patent, not me.
If this type of thinking were legitimized, it would be disasterous for the software industry. This is the first step toward making software something that can only be sold by megacorps, or bonded programmers, or something. Gates himself probably never would have been able to even get started, in an environment like that.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So Microsoft will protect VOLUME licensees. That helps Joe Blow how?
They upped their warranty to 12 months? Why is it only 12 months? Why shouldn't I be able to trust that the software will run correctly on the intended setup five years down the road? It's not like my car, where it degrades over time.
Even the analyst News.com.com interviewed had questions on whether this event is monumental.
Plus, MS is just using this to spread FUD over Linux. "If you get sued for our products, we'll protect you. Linux can't do that."
It's scary what a little competition can do to a monolithic company, isn't it?
Linux and OSS. Like it or hate it, it's making Microsoft do more of its job. They can't buy it, they can't squash it, they're having trouble taking legal action against it and their FUD efforts aren't doing much good and are backfiring in their faces.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Now, assume SCO tells us:
Hey, we claim that Windoze contains SCOde, so you gotta pay us $1,500 per license to avoid litigation...
Now, reading this:
In older contracts, Microsoft agreed to pay all legal fees for volume license customers who got sued because of Microsoft, but only up to the value of the software they bought.
But, my Corporate license was offered at a price of $120 per seat. So there's still a loss of $1,300 per seat, even if MS foots the bill!! Very clever, typical MS.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Um, this is supposed to happen in the future if Microsoft doesn't get its act together? Shoot, bubba, it's already happening. Once again, MS is being reactive & not proactive.
Microsoft gained its market dominance through marketing, unethical business practices, shrewd evangelical work in the education area, bundling applications with the OS, buying out the competition & (oh yes) pure dumb luck. Customer service & attention to the needs of end users has never been their strong suit.
As the article pointed out, these licensing changes are really there to keep the procurement agents, customers' lawyers, corporate brass et al. happy. They will have minimal real-world impact.
If it would have significant real-world impact, you can bet your glutes that Microsoft wouldn't have done it. Microsoft is in the business of making money, not making software products. I'm not saying this is good (the "neo-conservative" point-of-view) or bad (the "Soviet Russia" point-of-view). I'm just saying that's the way it is.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
This is a good way for M$ to get more (like they need it) free publicity and spread FUD at the same time.
In a normal business agreement there is often a clause that indemnifies the parties from lawsuits as a result of the other party's whatever. Only in software licenses where the user generally gets mugged on paper (you have no rights, they all belong to sw company) does this often get neglected. I've seen some licenses where the user agrees to hold the sw maker harmless and pay for ALL sw maker's legal costs in a lawsuit (example, you use product X from company M in a medical device, something goes wrong, patient dies, patient family sues you and company M due to supposed defect in device, you get pay M's legal bills in that case [M does not mean M$, just a letter for an example]).
M$ is just putting some of that standard language back. Most of all, it makes FUD arguments sound more legitimate. "Sure you save money up front on those open source programs, but what happens when SCO or the real authors of what's in that open source program comes knocking on your door demanding payment for your use of what was stolen from them? We are there for you. Our goal is to make you succeed. You don't have to worry about that problem with us, and in the unlikely event someone alleges impropriety and you end up in court with our product, you won't have to spend money on lawyers. We are here to protect you. Just sign right here."
Now here's one for you. It seems I recall that people have pointed out a few GPL code violations, running "strings" on a few M$ Windows DLL and EXEs revealed some amazing things. Now we know they used BSD code, but if they did use GPL or other code that they were not free to "incorporate" into their products, now that M$ is taking this step, maybe it is time to start seeking to proove the thefts and target M$ customers like SCO is targetting Linux customers.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Dang! And I was just about to file my lawsuits against the hundreds of companies whose servers are still infected by Code Red & Nimda, and attack mine on an hourly basis.
Guess now that they have infinite legal resources, I should become a lawyer instead.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
"Under the new provision, which took effect March 1" So this isn't the result of any of the SCO flap of the last few days, as it would appear. JAV
All software vendors should be responsible for IP claims on the software that they sell. Yes, that includes commercial Linux distros. Yes, that includes hobbyists selling shareware products. If you take money for it, you're saying that you have the rights to sell it. If you don't, then you're a thief and a liar.
Disclosure of interest: I work for a company that's pathological about keeping third party code out of our products. We sell to embedded device manufacturers and we simply cannot afford to get this wrong, because they will sue us until we glow, then hang us in the dark if we do.
There is absolutely no reason that vendors selling to Joe Public should be held to lower standards, other than that Joe lets them get away with it. While I still think that SCO is deranged, at least they're making it clear that you'd better be damn sure that you've got the rights - all of the rights - to whatever you're selling.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Under the new provision, which took effect March 1"
March 1? WTF... I'm really starting to think than Microsoft has masterminded this whole SCO attack. If it was implemented March 1 when was the idea thought of?
Let's see... Microsoft changes their license on March 1, Sco sues IBM a few days later. May 14 SCO sends out 1500 letters, a few days later Microsoft buys a license. Sco threatens to sue about a billion lowly users for copyright infringement, a few weeks later Cnet writes an article outlining the new Microsoft license.
Microsoft is too big to make these kinds of reactive decisions so quickly. They had to at least have inside knowledge of what SCO was up to in order to be so well prepared or be damned lucky.
No normal company would have the audacity to make the bizarre kinds of claims SCO is making. Microsoft who pretty much owns the US court system and can buy the verdict of their choice, has the power to at least have a chance of making a suit like this actually work.
Even if everything SCO has said is right... it's absurd to think they can sue little old me for buying a few copies of Slack and SuSE. Now if I distributed copies of those, then it might be possible. And what about the GPL?
If SCO is just taking a final potshot to raise some money so they can inflate their stock prices, those in charge will almost certainly get popped for insider trading if they dump that inflated stock. SCO isn't an Enron, they're a piss-ant little company. If they wanted to get bought out then they would have limited the scope of their lawsuit to IBM not the whole friggin Linux community. Almost no Linux users would ever do business with SCO or anyone who bought out SCO. If SCO were to win most of us would switch back to FreeBSD, in order to not do business with SCO.
The only logical conclusion is some company who has a competing product (to Linux) is behind this attack.
I have to say, whether this will cost Microsoft anything really depends on whether this change is retroactive.
Because when Word98 for Mac was new, they included customer support as part of the sales package, but when I was getting mass document corruption, they specifically denied anything was happening, and said that what I said was happening wasn't. Later, it turned out they knew all along that this corruption was happening, but didn't fix the problems till after Word2000, if at all.
If they had told me what was going on, I could have found a workaround. If they had accepted copies of the files for post-mortem examination, maybe we would have also found this out.
This cost us and our business over $17000 in direct costs for their intentional denial of contractually required support, and over $11000 in further lost contracts.
If this is retroactive, I will happily step up to the plate and request $38000. That, for one $100 piece of software+support that was negligently and inentionally not fulfilled.
You probably can guess: As far as I am concerned, until they do pay off on that, Microsoft is still a liability.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
"see, we can stand behind our software, its safe to do business with us"
This bad PR that the SCO case is giving OSS will take years to shake off..
But cant blame MS for capitalizing on our grief, no one ever said business is fair.
---- Booth was a patriot ----