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Flash EULA Doesn't Fit the Times
cphoenix writes "The latest Flash player license seems to forbid downloading their player onto a laptop. From the License: "you may not use the Software on any non-PC product or any embedded or device versions of the above operating systems, including, but not limited to, mobile devices, internet appliances, set top boxes (STB), handhelds, PDAs, phones, web pads, tablets, game consoles, TVs, DVDs, gaming machines, home automation systems, kiosks or any other consumer electronics devices or mobile/cable/satellite/television or closed system based service." This comes at a time when laptops are outselling desktops. And to add insult to injury, "You agree that Macromedia may audit your use of the Software ... In the event that such audit reveals any use of the Software by you other than in full compliance with the terms of this Agreement, you shall reimburse Macromedia for all reasonable expenses related to such audit."
I don't know if it explictly bans laptops.
The previous section of the EULA says (bolded emphasis mine)
You may install and use the Software on a single desktop computer that
has a Windows PC operating system (including desktop PC versions of Windows
95, 98, 2000, NT, ME and XP (Home and Professional), a Macintosh desktop operating
system, a Linux desktop operating system, or a Solaris desktop operating
system;
So at first glance, it does appear to be "desktop" machines, but then look at the next section.
you may not use the Software on any non-PC product or any embedded or device
versions of the above operating systems, including...closed system based service
This seems pretty clear that they mean specialized versions of any of the above OS's, like an XBox or
other console, or "closed system" (which appears at the end above). True, they do mention the word
"mobile device" in the list of things after the "including", but it also says "non-PC product, or any
embedded or device versions" of the OS. Is there any difference at all between laptop and desktop versions
of Windows XP, for example? If they really had meant to ban laptops, they would have had the word "laptop"
in the list of devices that are explicitly excluded.
Personally, I'm not a lawyer, but the interpretation of "no laptops" seems to be a very literal interpretation,
and I know this was kind of done as a "look how stupid this company is" attitude, but I don't think
a) a court would interpret this to mean "no laptops" or that b) Macromedia would take that stupid an interpretation
of the agreement.
Having said all that, companies have surprised me in the past, however.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Laptops are not "non-PC" nor are they embedded or device versions of yada yada yada.
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and what is he smoking? Last time I checked a laptop IS a PC. By mobile they obviosly are talking about phones, pdas, and such. Macromedia isn't stupid enough to kill a majority of the market for nothing.
so don't use it.
Hopefully Flash will eventually go the way of the tag.
Oh well, what the hell...
So Macromedia fucked up their EULA. Yes, it's funny. No, no one's going to get sued. Macromedia will fix it in 3 weeks and life will go on.
Does anyone know why they would bother to change the license to exclude these devices anyway?
My personal guess is that this is aimed at getting some money out of the whole "next generation cellphone multimedia content" thing.
They most likely just want to make sure they can charge the mobile providers if (when) they start rolling that kind of thing out.
well why did they even make a version for my g5 If it's illegal to run it on non-PCs.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Somebody actually read all that crap before clicking OK?
Maybe somebody is hoping?
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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You can install the player on laptops.
mike chambers
mesh@macromedia.com
If they give away millions of copies for free, legally speaking, wouldn't that be a good argument for them to NOT BOTHER auditing any other use?
Don't they make money selling the authoring tools, not the clients?
Seems like the correct amount for reasonable expenses is zero.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Great, I never wanted to install Flash, and finally that's just what is required by the EULA.
I think that the real issue here is not the laptop thing but the audit- how will they audit you?
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So i guess the sad ending to this story is that 1. Someone took the time to read the EULA amd 2. Read that much into it.
I guess I can keep the Flash player for my Timex/Sinclair then?
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I say it all hinges on the definition of the word "Is"
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it's the poor usage of it that can indeed suck.
Flash itself is fine and dandy, and allows a lot of functionality within a browser that wouldn't otherwise be there.
It's platform independant and allows us (ie. who I'm working for) to code a very nice application that can be distributed within companies with no extra software needing to be installed on their pcs.
Bad uses of nice software does not bad software make.
Is why they would want to restrict what you can use it for at all? You'd think that more popular = better image = better? I could understand restricting the dev kits but why wouldn't they want people to be able to play flash on non-PC devices?
"You agree that Macromedia may audit your use of the Software ... In the event that such audit reveals any use of the Software by you other than in full compliance with the terms of this Agreement, you shall reimburse Macromedia for all reasonable expenses related to such audit."
They get to randomly audit me and make me pay for it? I don't think so.
Do not forget to mention that the latest flash plug-in is not legal for use within a corporation. You must pay to use the client, and their price is not what you call competitive. The same thing everyone is talking about here applies to corporate use as well, meaning it can only be installed on one corporate machine. Flash is the devil, if you work in IT make sure any apps you use do not use flash. I would also recommend that no one flash at all on any website. Macromedia is worse than Microsoft in the licensing department. I'm not going to mention what company I work for, but there are rumors that macromedia is demanding to be paid an undisclosed amount for every machine that has flash player on it here.
Truth is what the submitter suggests is probably not the EULA's intent.
On the other hand I would quite happily have a EULA on my computer targeted towards web developers: You may not run your CPU intensive, non-standard flash in my browser - if you can't do your site in HTML, I will quite happily avoid it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Microsoft is helping draw this line. Linux, on the other hand, is not.
Microsoft quite clearly makes operating systems targetted at very specific niches. Their mainline Windows OS is targetted at desktop PC users (including laptops). Their server line of Windows OS is targetted at servers, and from the Macromedia EULA, it seems that these should not support Flash. They have their two embedded lines with WinCE and WinNTe which are also not supported under this EULA. From the main branch of the Windows OS line, there is also the WinXP MC-edition and WinXP Tablet edition, both of which are explicitly prohibited by the EULA. Macromedia says their software can be run on any device running the desktop version of the OS, and Microsoft says, "Ta-da-, here is exactly what we define as a desktop version OS, and here is what is not defined as such."
Linux, on the other hand, blurs the line to a great extent. On the one hand, it's widely used as a server OS, so Macromedia says it's probably OK to go ahead and allow use there. It's also used as a desktop OS, so of course they want to allow that. But then, as you mentioned, you start to get into things like specialized device ports which function just as well as their desktop OS counterparts, but are running on non-traditional (i.e. non-PC) hardware. Macromedia doesn't want that. They want to make sure they can get a per-device royalty on any software released to those devices. My guess is that they've probably got some good contacts with Montavista who are helping OEMs get "Flash for Linux Devices" running on their hardware.
Now the community looks and sees it is just a matter of hacking into the ROM and excising the Flash binary, a few magic incantations, and voila! they've got themselves something that can be put onto any Linux device for that particular processor. When that happens, Macromedia will be able to bring up the EULA and say, "Hey, we told you that you couldn't do this. And we don't seem to find you as a valid licensee. So please say hello to our little friend, The Courts."
My guess is that this is just the beginning of a wider restriction in licensing of closed-source software on open-source operating systems. Slowly it won't just be "device-targetted versions" of the OS that aren't allowed, but any version of the OS that is not provided from an approved list of vendors (Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake) who have made it clear that their operating systems are not just tarballs of code (Debian) but rather are specifically designed for target platforms.
That said, I am left scratching my head that they would consider either the WinXP for TabletPCs and WinXP Media Center edition unusable platforms. These are both very short diversions from the mainline Windows OS trunk. Much more "enhanced" versions of the OS than actual separate versions.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Wow, you sure have a passion in hating Flash.
:-) Cheers!
First of all, the article is, in typical slashdot manner, not just misleading, but plain wrong. Laptops are PCs, not embedded devices, so you're not prohibited in using Flash on them. You may dislike MM, but they are not stupid (unlike a part of the crowd)
Second, Flash does not suck resources unless there's heavy animation involved. It certainly doesn't use huge amounts of RAM.
Third, the parent poster uses the lowest form of FUD: he's lying. By default, a flash movie does NOT have access to microphone or webcam - you have to explicitly enable this, and this is a per-site setting. I won't even discuss the cookie nonsense.
Fourth, it's proprietary, because MM wants to stay in control, but the specs are readily available, as is the source code of the player.
There is nothing to stop you from making your own Flash content generator or player. Have a look at OSFlash.org for a list of Flash-related Open Source projects.
Finally, whether you like it or not, Flash is the best way to create modern web applications, a lot easier than AJAX, more widespread than XUL.
As to SVG standard, read and weep: SVG Rendering Comparison. Also, have you seen Adobe's SVG plugin for example? It makes Acrobat look small and snappy in comparison. It will take at least 5 more years until you'll be able to use SVG across browsers and platforms.
And, come on, this is Slashdot, you may hate flash, but can you resist the girls of Virtual Bartender?
On /. this will probably get modded Troll but ... Flash is great for certain things. Want to design a GUI quickly? Sure you Java guys can speed through some tight code, but for the rest of us who don't have time for the 'extend applet call-me-Ishmael' Java coder mindset (or if the client wants their simple calculator during this calender year) Flash will have you up and running in a day or two.
Want to tell the client that their site will look the same across browsers without 2k of javascript and lingering uncertainty? Code for Flash 5, embed the fonts and cash the check.
Need some quick dancing spaghetti at the top of the page? No problem and small too.
Want to make a really annoying intro without a skip button? You have the power.
All in all, a worthwhile tool.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
PC = Personal Computer
It really doesn't matter whether the computer is based on x86 or PPC.
sco unix is excluded, yay.
I can't use the new Flash Player? No more bandwidth-hogging Absolute Vodka ads and badly written Web games?
I might as well give up my Internet connection.
That's forbidding *black-box* reverse-engineering. Sure, no decompiling, etc... but they're saying that if you use the software as intended, to run a Flash file, but you're keeping track of what it looks like, you're violating their agreement. Wow.
This part is neat, too:
Obviously that first part sucks if you want to, say, backup your computer, make a "base install" ghost, install Flash onto all corporate computers, etc.. But look closely at the second part: when you download the installer, you are already breaking their EULA. Sweet. And if they audit you ("Did you download this? You're in the server logs. By the way, Macromedia pays me $2,000 an hour."), you have to pay them for the privilege.
Man, those lawyers are really earning their keep.
I think we should *all* write concerned letters to Macromedia, asking for an in-writing caveat to the license indicating that we are indeed allowed to download the Flash player from their server, to our computer, over a network. This stuff is amazing. Those lawyers must be working overtime.
This brings up a very good point.
What is the definition of a PC?
Second, Flash does not suck resources unless there's heavy animation involved. It certainly doesn't use huge amounts of RAM.
That's the theory. In practice, Macromedia's Flash player has bugs that mean you end up with an unusable web browser and dozens of flash processes running in the background on some platforms.
Finally, whether you like it or not, Flash is the best way to create modern web applications,
Flash breaks just about everything about the web that made the web successful in the first place: open standards, text-based representations, user control over rendering, cut-and-paste, and screen scraping.
Fortunately, even though idiotic attitudes like yours still exist in some backwards corners of the web, there isn't much point in getting worked up about it: Flash is a niche application and won't ever be anything more than that.
Also, have you seen Adobe's SVG plugin for example? It makes Acrobat look small and snappy in comparison.
Have you seen Adobe Acrobat Reader? It sucks: it's slow and memory hungry, while Linux and OS X have fast and compact PDF viewers. Just because one of Adobe's viewers sucks doesn't mean that nobody can do a good job implementing a viewer for that document type.
As to SVG standard, read and weep: SVG Rendering Comparison.
That's FUD on your part. What's there to "weep"? We have a handful of open source SVG implementations that implement a substantial portion of the standard and largely differ mostly in obscure areas. Those open source implementations are being created in addition to multiple commercial implementations.
It will probably be a while until IE has native SVG support built in, but Firefox and Mozilla are going to have it soon. Hopefully, someone will port a decent SVG plug-in to IE.
Someone actually read the EULA?
Ya know, ignore that comment I made above about "no childish flames". I'd like to see them "publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate, and reformat" something really puerile.
i'm one of the first people to say you should never install flash on a computer if at all possible.
If the computer is not intended for websurfing, by all means, don't! But it's rather essential in opposite case...
flash is a horrible horrible proprietary piece of junk.
Actually, the specs are open, it's just that all free flashes suck even worse.
it's main uses are to bypass the adblocking and cookie-deleting people.
It can be adblocked just the same. The flash cookies counterpart can be deleted all the same.
Design a better mousetrap and the Nature will design a better mouse.
it by default sets up your microphone and webcam to spy on you.
Plain wrong.
it sucks resources like there's no tomorrow
Less than Java applets. Animation in Flash is less of CPU hog than same thing in Javascript. It offers better compression than GIF anim (though there's the constant player overhead, so use only in case of big animations).
and without a 3rd party plugin, you cannot refuse to allow certain instances to run.
You can't allow ANY instance to run without a 3rd party plugin (THE flash player). If you install one extension or two, what's the difference?
believe me, there's virtually no reason for an end user to install it.
I won't. There are sites where ALL the navigation is done in Flash. Sure, they suck, but they often contain essential info you need, so you're forced to use Flash against your will. I've seen sites where the "enter" button is made in Flash. Sites with non-skippable flash intro. Sure, they suck. But you can't just shun all the info they contain because of method of presentation. You DO need flash. Off by default.
if you want to view animations, just download them and view with an external standalone player (search for one).
Except the ones that require to be run from a webpage because they are too big and load in parts, except the ones protected against copying, except the ones that provide website navigation, except the ones that just break in standalone player etc, etc. And the standalone player comes bundled with web plugin.
and websites that require flash, i never visit. no matter how urgently i need to view something, i go without.
So, you got that new laptop, and you need the video adapter drivers. So you will remain in 640x480x8bpp@60Hz, because the drivers are accessible only through a flash page? uh... That's rather fanatical.
i would like the svg standard to replace flash sometime soon... what's the current progress, anyone know?
As for scriptable SVG, no development kit like one for Flash on the horizon. And Inkscape is far from really usable yet.
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Fourth, it's proprietary, because MM wants to stay in control, but the specs are readily available, as is the source code of the player.
There is nothing to stop you from making your own Flash content generator or player. Have a look at OSFlash.org for a list of Flash-related Open Source projects.
You cannot legally use the flash specs to create your own player.
why is this funny?
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
Macromedia has never acknowledged or fixed any of the 20+ exploits for flash so anyone with brains would uninstall it, not seek to install it.
Basically, the main use of flash seems to be to put annoying ads on web pages. I block flash, javascript, animated gifs, popups and popunders. Not only is my browsing faster (still on dialup at home, sigh, and will be until Telecom NZ offers acceptable broadband options), but pages are much more pleasant to read without floating overlays, pulsing animations and sounds etc to distract.
Not so worried about cookies, but *hate* the things that chew bandwith and, much, worse, irritate and annoy me while I surf.
That's funny, because it's on my WM2003SE PocketPC right now. Guess where I got it from? Macromedia. Guess how much I payed for it? Nothing.
I think I'll uninstall it, though. It's buggy as hell.
Flash is not the "best way" to create web apps. It is simply one of the ways to do so. Any design technique that locks out (by the Flash license, by lack of viewer, by lack of all html readers having a reader, etc) a significant amount of the web is not the best way. The difference between things like AJAX, HTML forms, and Flash is that AJAX works on almost everything, including screen reader systems, HTML forms works on all but the very first browsers, and Flash works on IE, Mozilla, and those few browsers that emulate one of their plugin interfaces. That means Flash is the least likely one to work.
As another poster pointed out, Flash breaks everything that made the web the web. You remove accessibility completely, you remove search completely, you remove UA controlled presentations completely. Part of the "appeal" of Flash is even to actively prevent people from getting the SWF file offline. But hey, we don't need useful markup, screen readers, offline storage, searching, font scaling, search engines, or anything else - because bad web apps programmers and incompetent site designers have decided that Flash is the next messiah. Here's a good for you, do you think Google would work if everything was some stupid Flash-based site? (Hey, lets index hundreds of millions of sites that use vector graphics for all their text! That should be doable, if we have a few hundred supercomputers, excellent programmers, and most people use the same technique - yeah!)
FWIW, I agressively avoid Flash only sites. The format has its place, but creating sites and web apps are not that place. I also avoid sites that have Flash sound, Flash menues, heavy Flash advertising, or that place all their content in Flash. Learn to write HTML instead of half-assed Flash sites (and by half-assed, I mean sites written in Flash).
Anyway, laptops are PCs that are also "mobile devices". The license at the time the article was submitted prohibited any "mobile device", which would thereby prohibit laptops.
You are right that MM isn't stupid. They managed to take a niche product and get it used all over the Internet, and then convince people like you that it's essential! That's good marketing, right there. It still doesn't make *Flash* something worthwhile, necessary, or good.
Furthermore, the term that makes you liable to repay them if they decide to audit you is outright lunacy. That being a known condition might even make more than a few admin and PHB types demand the software be removed from their corporate networks! Who would want the possibilty that MacroMedia could do such a thing to you? Sure, they *probably* won't, but you can't be absolutely certain!
BTW, SVG isn't for writing sites in, either.
Or other Unix-like operating systems that aren't Linux or Solaris? Nice of them to cut us out of the loop, even though we run flash on the same desktops as Linux and Solaris.
EULA or should it be 'EU' End Users.
2 License Grants
b. You agree that Macromedia may audit your use of the Software for compliance with these terms at any time
No i do not agree.
2 License Grants
c. Your license rights under this EULA are non-exclusive.
Importers of copyright products under licence can be vulnerable to unscrupulous competitors who infringe their rights and gamble that, by the time an overseas supplier gets involved, they'll have achieved their goal of market entry.
This is not really adequate to protect business interests, tradmarks, copyrights, what about are licence lefts? what can we do without restriction.
The real thing that annoys me is that i helped Macromedia port the flash player to debian, was called project mustang.
I have seen enough, and am removing all traces.
Only the stupid rely on what they assume is the other party's intent, rather than the wording, when dealing with a legal document that explicitly invokes liability for noncompliance.
That goes double when the other party is a corporation, because there is no guarantee of continuity in management personnel, much less their intent.
And that certainly goes triple when the other party is a company that is currently being acquired by a different one, and thus absolutely certain the people in charge even in the short term future won't be the same ones as there are when the agreement was entered into.
To give you an analogy -- Caldera, in 1999, was a perfectly nice Linux company. Imagine the kind of case one could face from its current incarnation, the SCO Group, if you'd licensed something from Caldera with the belief that the intent behind the license wasn't exactly what the wording said, and used it based on your belief of the intent instead of in compliance with the wording.
So, looking at this EULA, I see it clearly and specifically authorizes use only on a "desktop computer". A laptop is not a desktop computer; thus, the EULA does not appear to allow me to put it on a laptop. It goes on to ban a number of specific devices, but with the phrasing "including, but not limited to", so the absence of the word "laptops" from the list does not serve to mean they are permitted.
Now, I am perfectly certain today's Macromedia management is not going to come after me for installing on a laptop. But I cannot be certain, and no one can guarantee me, that the future managers of Adobe won't be Darl McBride-alikes. That being the case, the potential liability more than swamps the incremental benefit of using the latest version of the Flash player.
And this, people, is why we shouldn't be relying on proprietary formats. Just because we can use them today doesn't mean we can tomorrow.
Ah, I see now. The Back button is only used by a small number of developers and power users?
No; the opposite of open is use-controlled.
So GPL'ed code isn't open?
Unfortunately, just like the SMB "standard," the Flash(tm) specification cannot be used to implement an open viewer.
That's true, it is a licensing restriction of that documentation, but there is a GPL Flash Player.
To me, the question comes down to: what's really important? Open specifications have been used and abused by Microsoft to bash competitors for time immemorial. (Microsoft sez: "We follow the open specification, but we've improved it!") The fact that Java was so open is what allowed Microsoft to kill it on the client-side. To me it's a question of abstract political what-ifs vs the practical reality of the issue.
Since when is a laptop computer not equivalent to a desktop machine?
If this were (hypothetically) to be contested, all I would (hypothetically) have to do is insist that my laptop machine is placed upon a desk, thereby making it inescapably a desktop machine by any sane linguistic definition.
End of story.