They think it allows them to observe unobtrusively.
What really happens is it allows us to observe them thinking they are observing us unobtrusively. Stupid bunch of scriptkiddies.
Heh. Honeypot, anyone?
Number one, managing access on a per-page basis couldn't be done on iNTEL until now?
We knew that Microsoft has made their place by selling unsafe software for all these years. Now we see that iNTEL has done the same. And we see that, just like Microsoft, when the power of CPUs actually makes it possible for them to sell amost competitive products that are built correctly, they still have built them correctly to the wrong standards. And we will see that they aren't really competive, after all. Maybe watching video will mostly work without too many glitches, but thid inversion of trust they call TPM is going to make it impossible to use more than half of the cycles that should be available from your CPU, and that only if you have just one virtualized machine.
And Symantec's stupid anti-virus hypervisor? It's broken already. Now there's one more speedbump between you and my keyloggers.
All you iNTEL fanbois, look what your fanaticism just bought you.
defense you have for spouting thoroughly revisionist history blather?
I was there. I know how silly what you said was. No/. reader except a very few thoroughly bent M$Fanbois would take what you said seriously, and there is no hope of reaching them through reason.
You would either have to be one of said M$Fanbois or a troll.
Thus, arguing with you is irrational.
But I still have to wonder how you managed to find someone who would mod you up, thus the question.
Start with a false premise and your conclusions are based on a false premise.
Before that, however --
Microsoft is the company that has consistently insisted on adding unsafe features just because they figure the industry gives them a couple of years buffer before the stuff hits the fan.
Fighting logical fallacy with logical fallacy, I'll offer this analogy. If Microsoft were the football team that has been winning the national championships for twenty years and the world championships for ten, yeah they'd have enemies and be the subject of envy and idolism. If everyone were cheating, a lot of the idols would excuse them because everyone cheats.
But what we have here is Microsoft's insisting on using exploding footballs, and more and more of the spectators are realizing they are the ones that get hurt every time Microsoft kicks the ball into the stands.
Without your poor security record and woeful OS, spammers wouldn't have this huge arsenal at their disposal. Furthermore, companies and people wouldn't be earning billions a year fighting this crap. Hope your happy Billyboy Gates!
The sysad chooses and uses the tools, and can claim some value in being able to choose wisely and wield skillfully.
Particularly since wise choice requires ongoing research and skill requires refinement. Barracudas only operate themselves for a little while, and Symantec, of course, is not a wise choice for many shops. If a sysad uses Symantec, he or she must keep up-to-date on whether the shop is running stuff hackers want in badly enough to take the (diminishing) extra effort to get the jump on Symantec.
A wise choice for antivirus and/or firewall requires a lot of continuing support activity in the present internet environment.
mentioned at least by reference several times already:
Estimated volume of new spam being avoided (could be attached to the actual volume of spam hitting the filters).
Estimated number of malware infections prevented.
Estimated avoided hours of user downtime.
I think the negative list could continue quite a ways. The first or second would probably get an "oh, get real" kind of response, but if you line up enough of the (real) consequences of you not doing your job, the value should become apparent eventually.
Except in the worst cases. Let's hope your PHBeanCounter is not one of those.
Because, yes, it would be more interesting for her to listen to people she knows talk about themselves than to stare at a relative/friend/acquaintance scared to start a conversation that won't work. As long as the visitor isn't talking incessantly or just talking because he or she is scared of silence.
For instance, grandparents are often quite interested in their grandchildren's activities.
Sure, she wants to talk about herself, too, but until you figure out a way for that it's okay to for visitors to chatter a _little_ about themselves.
yes, conclusions can often become cumbersome rather quickly.:-/
But, really, I don't mind when people draw their own conclusions. In fact, I prefer that they do so.
I do like to ask other people to consider things they might not yet have considered. I think it's a shame when people draw conclusions from incomplete basis. But, since they do not know everything I know (and I do not know everything they know), I assume their conclusions will still be at least somewhat different from mine. And that's okay.
I think we disagree. To you, nothing supernatural can be real, if I understand you right.
To me, I aknowledge two classes of things attributed to the supernatural:
One is real, but is beyond our (present) understanding.
The other is the artificial (meaning, not real) explanations of things we can't understand, or of things we haven't made the effort to understand.
> whether you call it superstition or things beyond my understanding? > What exactly is the latter supposed to mean anyway?
Do you claim to have a correct understanding of everything? Even the things which you understand, is your understanding perfect?
Once upon a time, it was obvious that feathers and cannonballs fall at different rates. The false science -- superstition -- was that heavier things fell faster. Our science has cleared that one up, but we still have to operate on theories that are incomplete when we dig deep enough. Is there a gravity (exchange) particle? Is the graviton exists, does it have a pair, or anti-particle? Or is gravity simply the result of the "curvature" of the universe?
Incomplete theories are distinguishable from superstion by exactly one point: when we completely give up on extending our understanding, we tend to become dogmatic and/or compulsive. When that happens, our theory has become superstition to us.
>It's really simple, you know.
It's often even simpler than we think it is.
> There is nothing outside this nature, nothing that we can't feel, see, hear, touch, count or reason about.
Dark matter?
If it exists, it is beyond our present tools. Yes, those who think it might exist hope to soon be able to prove it either does or does not exist, and if they prove the positive, they will have brought it within the scope of nature which we can work with in some respect.
But if we become dogmatic about it's existence, whether affirming or denying, that would be superstition. It would be even more superstitious to start asserting properties after we have become dogmatic (as opposed to before we become dogmatic, when we are simply hypothesizing or maybe just speculating).
Strings?
Well, an odd thing about science is that sometimes we have to become dogmatic to properly test a theory. So, superstition really isn't just being dogmatic about something you don't know, it's refusing to give up the dogmatism when you are done with the tests.
> And whether that happens through science, technology, philosophy, > spirituality or some yet unknown culturual invention doesn't really matter.
You acknowledge spirituality? Well, that's good. That indicates we might have more common ground than I thought, although I admit that I have no immediate guess as to what specific spirituality you are including in your list.
> But religion and particularly any God figure is really poor at explaining reality, don't you agree.
I can't agree with a sentence that parses against the semantics I use for the words in the sentence. Can't exactly disagree meaningfully, either.
I'm not sure what religion means to you.
My definition of religion includes the comment attributed to James (of the New Testament):
Pure religion... is... to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,...
My definition of God excludes anything that I know or learn to be false.
One thing, perhaps, which you misunderstand about my use of religion -- I do not use religion as my explanation of anything. Nor do I think it is God's primary job to explain reality. Religion is my application of my understanding of the deeper realities to my life. (By deeper realities, I mean the things that are hard to touch, like love and like the reasons I think certain things are important to me.)
Religious philosophy, to me, is an amusing, and sometimes dangerous, diversion -- a game
Maybe I could have used another comma or something. But I did not say Theo lacks commitment to freedom.
I said that there are people who have strong personalities like Theo, but (in contrast to Theo) lack commitment to freedom, and I suggested considering how such a person would (ab)use this Microsoft Permissive License.
(I'm guessing Theo would not touch this license with a ten-foot pole.)
Microsoft describes the grant relative to copyright as a "copyright license", which implicitly invokes the theories of intellectual property being more than a euphemism for rights in the marketplace with respect to trafficking in an invention or creative work.
The other is just that which we do not yet understand. (You've probably quoted the any sufficiently advanced technology meme yourself?)
It's good to reject superstition, of course, but do you really intend to assert that there is no science or technology enough beyond your understanding that it appears supernatural to you?
If the exact same license were proposed by any other party you wouldn't give a damn about it.
Ugh yourself and see how you like it.
Yes I would care. A defective license is a defective license, whether it is Microsoft or someone else who creates it. We don't need a proliferation of licenses, and we especially don't need any more half-baked licenses like this one.
Microsoft is getting the kids' gloves treatment on this license, truth be told. I have seen similar attempts to "fix" the Berkeley copyright notice absolutely ripped to shreds by both the free and open camps.
First, you have in your audience a not small number of people who are at best indirectly acquainted with many USAmerican traditions concerning freedom. Some, in fact, have lived out their lives in cultures where freedom officially only means as-in-beer, and any attempt to talk about the right to determine how one uses one's tools (much less the corelation between freedom and respensibility) is treated as political blasphemy or worse.
Second, many USAmericans have, shall we say, chosen to focus on the supposed virtues of free-as-in-beer to the neglect of their understanding of the other. They have, as it were, succumbed to the siren that sings about letting someone else make the hard choices.
So, yes, there are an awful lot of Americans who have forgotten or turned their backs on freedom. And that means there are now, after several generations, an awful lot of Americans who have never really been exposed to the attitudes of freedom and DIY.
Third, sarcasm has this inherent weakness: Sometimes people can't tell when they should not take you seriously. (And it has a cutting edge on the back side of the blade, sometimes you find yourself, having intended to speak sarcastically, having spoken something that was true in ways you hadn't intended.) Anyway, sarcasm cuts both ways, and should rather be used sparingly.
Okay, after a little sleep, I think I can give a better appraisal.
Name:
The license is named "Permissive". This gives us Microsoft's opinion on the sharing of ideas, I think. But we all knew already that Microsoft wants to live in a world where programs can't be shared without permission. Anyway, we'll see more evidence of their attitude as we go.
Introduction:
The license is declared to govern use. In fact, it begins with a shrink-wrap style clause. It asserts that, if you use the software, you accept the license. It doesn't mention legal fair use here, as is Microsoft's habit in such clauses.
Compare this to the GPL, which simply explains that when you fail to comply with either the GPL or with legal fair use, the GPL hasn't licensed your use. If you have no other valid license, your use is contrary to law.
What's the difference? In the one case, Microsoft asserts your participation in the contract of the license. In the other, the FSF informs you that you need a license for certain activities.
Section 1:
Definitions are invoked from copyright law. Contribution and contributor are defined.
"Licensed patents" are invoked using a legalese that I'm not sure was necessary. The definition seems to pre-assert, at any rate, that patents the contributor claims which "read on" the contribution are licensed by the contributor through the contribution. More implicit participation in the contract.
Section 2:
Get the grants out of the way, make forward reference to the limitations and conditions. It's a bit loopy, but when we read the language, we see that the structure may be dictated by Microsoft's attitude that it, rather than the contributors, directs the licensing. Or maybe that's just my interpretation.
Anyway, we see that the license is a contract such that contributors grant licenses to reproduce, prepare derivative works, and distribute. It attempts to cover both copyright and patent grant, and I'm not going to argue with the effort at this point. Maybe later, maybe not.
Section 3:
Establish the limits, wrap up the forward references.
(A) Trademarks are a side issue. This is legally unnecessary here, but as a matter of practicality, it's probably a good idea that they point out that trademarks are a side issue.
(B) Punishment clause for bringing legal action over patents. Very narrow in application, which is probably a good thing if patents should apply to software. I had initially seen this as a one-way patent trap, but I think it's just narrow. I'm not sure it's too narrow to just apply to software patents, however.
(C) We finally get to what is the second clause in the Berkeley copyright statement, an explicit prohibition on attempted copyright claim jumps. It also includes patent, trademark, and attribution notices, probably essential, given the rest of the structure of the license.
(D) License restrictions. Seems very strict. Maybe.
Source code can only be this license. That may not be so bad, however, as the license does not appear to force an extension to the whole body of work in the case of inclusion. I'm not sure that it would even prevent mixing with GPL, if (and only if) we could be sure that inclusion does not extend the scope. I'll have to go re-read the GPL about compatible licenses again, however, to be sure.
The license for binary code must comply with this license, but the license offers no definition of compliance. That's a huge problem for binary distribution, as others have noted, but not insurmountable in some special cases.
(E) The use-at-your-own-risk clause is too quiet.
Conclusion? Microsoft's lawyers are beginning to get the form, but still don't get the substance. Also, they don't understand the danger of attempting to be "cute". They are trying too hard to be concise.
Without clarification of 3.D, it is broken. Either you can't tell what is required of you, or you can't mix code under this license with code under any other license. Unt
Part B only applying to contributors may not have been intentional, but it must be fixed or this license is unbalanced against the users, and is lacking freedom, even compared to MIT/BSD class licenses.
I had missed that in my first reading. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
Other than that, it's one-way. It's a club, not a shield. It expresses succinctly all the evil ways a free or open software license can be explicitly crafted to interact with patents. If this license were to be widely adapted (I think not, but,...) consider how it could be used (virally!) to extract patent agreements with Microsoft.
Part C is redundant with law in most countries. (Being able to alter copyright notices is tantamount to being able to claim other people's software for your own. This clause actually is probably necessary for practical reasons in the Microsoft world.)
Part C & D are not the same thing, of course.
Part D is about the freedom to use your own license on code that you contribute, and, yes, you are right to worry about the word complies. But an MIT/BSD class license (which this is trying to imitate) does not attempt to include such restrictions for very good reasons. Restricting the licenses allowed for contributions is going to make it hard to fork projects.
Part E reflects the use-at-your-own-risk clause in most free or open licenses, not to mention the limitations asserted in most non-free or closed licenses. One deficiency here is that it will be practically unnoticed. It serves less as a warning to the user than as an escape clause for the vendor.
I'm a bit more negative about this license than you are, but I agree with you about one thing: If Microsoft really wants to get involved, there is no need for inventing new licenses, or, indeed for inventing much of anything large and obvious.
The best thing for Microsoft to do would be to do what Apple did, maybe even use Apple's Public License, substituting Microsoft for Apple, if Apple's lawyers would let them. Start with FreeBSD and re-implement the most essential parts of the MSWindows UI on top of that. That would clean up a lot of legal problems as well as technical.
But I don't think it's organizationally possible for Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it's already cracked.
They think it allows them to observe unobtrusively.
What really happens is it allows us to observe them thinking they are observing us unobtrusively. Stupid bunch of scriptkiddies.
Heh. Honeypot, anyone?
Number one, managing access on a per-page basis couldn't be done on iNTEL until now?
We knew that Microsoft has made their place by selling unsafe software for all these years. Now we see that iNTEL has done the same. And we see that, just like Microsoft, when the power of CPUs actually makes it possible for them to sell amost competitive products that are built correctly, they still have built them correctly to the wrong standards. And we will see that they aren't really competive, after all. Maybe watching video will mostly work without too many glitches, but thid inversion of trust they call TPM is going to make it impossible to use more than half of the cycles that should be available from your CPU, and that only if you have just one virtualized machine.
And Symantec's stupid anti-virus hypervisor? It's broken already. Now there's one more speedbump between you and my keyloggers.
All you iNTEL fanbois, look what your fanaticism just bought you.
defense you have for spouting thoroughly revisionist history blather?
/. reader except a very few thoroughly bent M$Fanbois would take what you said seriously, and there is no hope of reaching them through reason.
I was there. I know how silly what you said was. No
You would either have to be one of said M$Fanbois or a troll.
Thus, arguing with you is irrational.
But I still have to wonder how you managed to find someone who would mod you up, thus the question.
that bit ya, huh?
First --
...."
hypothesis contrary to fact:
"If Microsoft were not the dominant OS
Start with a false premise and your conclusions are based on a false premise.
Before that, however --
Microsoft is the company that has consistently insisted on adding unsafe features just because they figure the industry gives them a couple of years buffer before the stuff hits the fan.
Fighting logical fallacy with logical fallacy, I'll offer this analogy. If Microsoft were the football team that has been winning the national championships for twenty years and the world championships for ten, yeah they'd have enemies and be the subject of envy and idolism. If everyone were cheating, a lot of the idols would excuse them because everyone cheats.
But what we have here is Microsoft's insisting on using exploding footballs, and more and more of the spectators are realizing they are the ones that get hurt every time Microsoft kicks the ball into the stands.
and modded yourself informative, I suppose?
I say it's only a matter of time. The evidence of malfeasance is there.
If I were in the government of South Africa, I would be looking for a venue to sue SBC and Telkom for non-performance.
But, considering the exploding gear in Texas, I'd insist on my money back rather than attempt to enforce performance.
The sysad chooses and uses the tools, and can claim some value in being able to choose wisely and wield skillfully.
Particularly since wise choice requires ongoing research and skill requires refinement. Barracudas only operate themselves for a little while, and Symantec, of course, is not a wise choice for many shops. If a sysad uses Symantec, he or she must keep up-to-date on whether the shop is running stuff hackers want in badly enough to take the (diminishing) extra effort to get the jump on Symantec.
A wise choice for antivirus and/or firewall requires a lot of continuing support activity in the present internet environment.
joudanzuki
I'm not sure since when. It has been fairly recent.
Maybe Apple has been slow for whatever their reasons might be, but the mini did get an upgrade.
(Not that I care that much since Apple stopped selling PPC Macs.)
mentioned at least by reference several times already:
Estimated volume of new spam being avoided (could be attached to the actual volume of spam hitting the filters).
Estimated number of malware infections prevented.
Estimated avoided hours of user downtime.
I think the negative list could continue quite a ways. The first or second would probably get an "oh, get real" kind of response, but if you line up enough of the (real) consequences of you not doing your job, the value should become apparent eventually.
Except in the worst cases. Let's hope your PHBeanCounter is not one of those.
yeah.
that's why they call it chip real estate.
(Hyuck. Get it?)
It was open for most practical purposes until Microsoft was able to wield a long enough but to close it down.
There are more than one advantages to taking the cleanroom approach.
Because, yes, it would be more interesting for her to listen to people she knows talk about themselves than to stare at a relative/friend/acquaintance scared to start a conversation that won't work. As long as the visitor isn't talking incessantly or just talking because he or she is scared of silence.
For instance, grandparents are often quite interested in their grandchildren's activities.
Sure, she wants to talk about herself, too, but until you figure out a way for that it's okay to for visitors to chatter a _little_ about themselves.
yes, conclusions can often become cumbersome rather quickly. :-/
But, really, I don't mind when people draw their own conclusions. In fact, I prefer that they do so.
I do like to ask other people to consider things they might not yet have considered. I think it's a shame when people draw conclusions from incomplete basis. But, since they do not know everything I know (and I do not know everything they know), I assume their conclusions will still be at least somewhat different from mine. And that's okay.
> The supernatural isn't "real",
... is ... to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, ...
I think we disagree. To you, nothing supernatural can be real, if I understand you right.
To me, I aknowledge two classes of things attributed to the supernatural:
One is real, but is beyond our (present) understanding.
The other is the artificial (meaning, not real) explanations of things we can't understand, or of things we haven't made the effort to understand.
> whether you call it superstition or things beyond my understanding?
> What exactly is the latter supposed to mean anyway?
Do you claim to have a correct understanding of everything? Even the things which you understand, is your understanding perfect?
Once upon a time, it was obvious that feathers and cannonballs fall at different rates. The false science -- superstition -- was that heavier things fell faster. Our science has cleared that one up, but we still have to operate on theories that are incomplete when we dig deep enough. Is there a gravity (exchange) particle? Is the graviton exists, does it have a pair, or anti-particle? Or is gravity simply the result of the "curvature" of the universe?
Incomplete theories are distinguishable from superstion by exactly one point: when we completely give up on extending our understanding, we tend to become dogmatic and/or compulsive. When that happens, our theory has become superstition to us.
>It's really simple, you know.
It's often even simpler than we think it is.
> There is nothing outside this nature, nothing that we can't feel, see, hear, touch, count or reason about.
Dark matter?
If it exists, it is beyond our present tools. Yes, those who think it might exist hope to soon be able to prove it either does or does not exist, and if they prove the positive, they will have brought it within the scope of nature which we can work with in some respect.
But if we become dogmatic about it's existence, whether affirming or denying, that would be superstition. It would be even more superstitious to start asserting properties after we have become dogmatic (as opposed to before we become dogmatic, when we are simply hypothesizing or maybe just speculating).
Strings?
Well, an odd thing about science is that sometimes we have to become dogmatic to properly test a theory. So, superstition really isn't just being dogmatic about something you don't know, it's refusing to give up the dogmatism when you are done with the tests.
> And whether that happens through science, technology, philosophy,
> spirituality or some yet unknown culturual invention doesn't really matter.
You acknowledge spirituality? Well, that's good. That indicates we might have more common ground than I thought, although I admit that I have no immediate guess as to what specific spirituality you are including in your list.
> But religion and particularly any God figure is really poor at explaining reality, don't you agree.
I can't agree with a sentence that parses against the semantics I use for the words in the sentence. Can't exactly disagree meaningfully, either.
I'm not sure what religion means to you.
My definition of religion includes the comment attributed to James (of the New Testament):
Pure religion
My definition of God excludes anything that I know or learn to be false.
One thing, perhaps, which you misunderstand about my use of religion -- I do not use religion as my explanation of anything. Nor do I think it is God's primary job to explain reality. Religion is my application of my understanding of the deeper realities to my life. (By deeper realities, I mean the things that are hard to touch, like love and like the reasons I think certain things are important to me.)
Religious philosophy, to me, is an amusing, and sometimes dangerous, diversion -- a game
and if they always were, well, you'd be left with the unescapable conclusion that you were God, ...
which would get kind of boring after a while.
Maybe I could have used another comma or something. But I did not say Theo lacks commitment to freedom.
I said that there are people who have strong personalities like Theo, but (in contrast to Theo) lack commitment to freedom, and I suggested considering how such a person would (ab)use this Microsoft Permissive License.
(I'm guessing Theo would not touch this license with a ten-foot pole.)
Microsoft describes the grant relative to copyright as a "copyright license", which implicitly invokes the theories of intellectual property being more than a euphemism for rights in the marketplace with respect to trafficking in an invention or creative work.
One is unreal, superstition, etc.
The other is just that which we do not yet understand. (You've probably quoted the any sufficiently advanced technology meme yourself?)
It's good to reject superstition, of course, but do you really intend to assert that there is no science or technology enough beyond your understanding that it appears supernatural to you?
AC:
Ugh yourself and see how you like it.
Yes I would care. A defective license is a defective license, whether it is Microsoft or someone else who creates it. We don't need a proliferation of licenses, and we especially don't need any more half-baked licenses like this one.
Microsoft is getting the kids' gloves treatment on this license, truth be told. I have seen similar attempts to "fix" the Berkeley copyright notice absolutely ripped to shreds by both the free and open camps.
Well, there are three things going on here.
First, you have in your audience a not small number of people who are at best indirectly acquainted with many USAmerican traditions concerning freedom. Some, in fact, have lived out their lives in cultures where freedom officially only means as-in-beer, and any attempt to talk about the right to determine how one uses one's tools (much less the corelation between freedom and respensibility) is treated as political blasphemy or worse.
Second, many USAmericans have, shall we say, chosen to focus on the supposed virtues of free-as-in-beer to the neglect of their understanding of the other. They have, as it were, succumbed to the siren that sings about letting someone else make the hard choices.
So, yes, there are an awful lot of Americans who have forgotten or turned their backs on freedom. And that means there are now, after several generations, an awful lot of Americans who have never really been exposed to the attitudes of freedom and DIY.
Third, sarcasm has this inherent weakness: Sometimes people can't tell when they should not take you seriously. (And it has a cutting edge on the back side of the blade, sometimes you find yourself, having intended to speak sarcastically, having spoken something that was true in ways you hadn't intended.) Anyway, sarcasm cuts both ways, and should rather be used sparingly.
joudanzuki
Okay, after a little sleep, I think I can give a better appraisal.
Name:
The license is named "Permissive". This gives us Microsoft's opinion on the sharing of ideas, I think. But we all knew already that Microsoft wants to live in a world where programs can't be shared without permission. Anyway, we'll see more evidence of their attitude as we go.
Introduction:
The license is declared to govern use. In fact, it begins with a shrink-wrap style clause. It asserts that, if you use the software, you accept the license. It doesn't mention legal fair use here, as is Microsoft's habit in such clauses.
Compare this to the GPL, which simply explains that when you fail to comply with either the GPL or with legal fair use, the GPL hasn't licensed your use. If you have no other valid license, your use is contrary to law.
What's the difference? In the one case, Microsoft asserts your participation in the contract of the license. In the other, the FSF informs you that you need a license for certain activities.
Section 1:
Definitions are invoked from copyright law. Contribution and contributor are defined.
"Licensed patents" are invoked using a legalese that I'm not sure was necessary. The definition seems to pre-assert, at any rate, that patents the contributor claims which "read on" the contribution are licensed by the contributor through the contribution. More implicit participation in the contract.
Section 2:
Get the grants out of the way, make forward reference to the limitations and conditions. It's a bit loopy, but when we read the language, we see that the structure may be dictated by Microsoft's attitude that it, rather than the contributors, directs the licensing. Or maybe that's just my interpretation.
Anyway, we see that the license is a contract such that contributors grant licenses to reproduce, prepare derivative works, and distribute. It attempts to cover both copyright and patent grant, and I'm not going to argue with the effort at this point. Maybe later, maybe not.
Section 3:
Establish the limits, wrap up the forward references.
(A) Trademarks are a side issue. This is legally unnecessary here, but as a matter of practicality, it's probably a good idea that they point out that trademarks are a side issue.
(B) Punishment clause for bringing legal action over patents. Very narrow in application, which is probably a good thing if patents should apply to software. I had initially seen this as a one-way patent trap, but I think it's just narrow. I'm not sure it's too narrow to just apply to software patents, however.
(C) We finally get to what is the second clause in the Berkeley copyright statement, an explicit prohibition on attempted copyright claim jumps. It also includes patent, trademark, and attribution notices, probably essential, given the rest of the structure of the license.
(D) License restrictions. Seems very strict. Maybe.
Source code can only be this license. That may not be so bad, however, as the license does not appear to force an extension to the whole body of work in the case of inclusion. I'm not sure that it would even prevent mixing with GPL, if (and only if) we could be sure that inclusion does not extend the scope. I'll have to go re-read the GPL about compatible licenses again, however, to be sure.
The license for binary code must comply with this license, but the license offers no definition of compliance. That's a huge problem for binary distribution, as others have noted, but not insurmountable in some special cases.
(E) The use-at-your-own-risk clause is too quiet.
Conclusion? Microsoft's lawyers are beginning to get the form, but still don't get the substance. Also, they don't understand the danger of attempting to be "cute". They are trying too hard to be concise.
Without clarification of 3.D, it is broken. Either you can't tell what is required of you, or you can't mix code under this license with code under any other license. Unt
Part A is not redundant in practical terms.
...) consider how it could be used (virally!) to extract patent agreements with Microsoft.
Part B only applying to contributors may not have been intentional, but it must be fixed or this license is unbalanced against the users, and is lacking freedom, even compared to MIT/BSD class licenses.
I had missed that in my first reading. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
Other than that, it's one-way. It's a club, not a shield. It expresses succinctly all the evil ways a free or open software license can be explicitly crafted to interact with patents. If this license were to be widely adapted (I think not, but,
Part C is redundant with law in most countries. (Being able to alter copyright notices is tantamount to being able to claim other people's software for your own. This clause actually is probably necessary for practical reasons in the Microsoft world.)
Part C & D are not the same thing, of course.
Part D is about the freedom to use your own license on code that you contribute, and, yes, you are right to worry about the word complies. But an MIT/BSD class license (which this is trying to imitate) does not attempt to include such restrictions for very good reasons. Restricting the licenses allowed for contributions is going to make it hard to fork projects.
Part E reflects the use-at-your-own-risk clause in most free or open licenses, not to mention the limitations asserted in most non-free or closed licenses. One deficiency here is that it will be practically unnoticed. It serves less as a warning to the user than as an escape clause for the vendor.
I'm a bit more negative about this license than you are, but I agree with you about one thing: If Microsoft really wants to get involved, there is no need for inventing new licenses, or, indeed for inventing much of anything large and obvious.
The best thing for Microsoft to do would be to do what Apple did, maybe even use Apple's Public License, substituting Microsoft for Apple, if Apple's lawyers would let them. Start with FreeBSD and re-implement the most essential parts of the MSWindows UI on top of that. That would clean up a lot of legal problems as well as technical.
But I don't think it's organizationally possible for Microsoft.