[OT] MS EULA -- (will ActiveState become outlaws? ;-)

[David LeBlanc]

In article <3B33644D.E32B4215 at pfortin.com>, pfortin at pfortin.com says...
> This page was visible with NS4.77/Linux yesterday; now, it stalls for a few
> seconds, then presents a "page not found" screen...  either they are shutting
> out NS and/or Linux, or they've removed it...

Today MS IE 5.5 stalls and then puts up a "page cannot be found" 404 
page. I wonder if MS legal woke up and smelled the gathering litigation 
clouds. I'm not a lawyer, but this smacks of restraint of trade or unfair 
competition at least. Of course, that's par for the course at MS, but 
even they are not usually so stupid as to hand the opposition a smoking 
gun like this.

Roeland Rengelink wrote:
> > Well, as I see it the GPL licence is morally equivalent to
> > 
> > 1. This is raging commie stuff
> > 2. You can't use raging commie stuff in conjunction with evil empire
> > stuff
> > 
> > and this microsoft licence is morally equivalent to
> > 
> > 1. This is evil empire stuff
> > 2. You can't use evil empire stuff in conjunction with raging commie
> > stuff
> > 
> > For once the free software movement and microsoft seem to agree on
> > something
> > 
> > More seriously, the lack of a definition of ''use'' under (ii), and the
> > misleading definition of Potentially Viral Software gives the impression
> > that this was written by their PR department, rather than their lawyers.
> > 
> > But then, I know as little about law as I do about PR.
> > 
> > Roeland

Fascism or communism - what choices!

Hopefully, while this is something important to watch, it won't 
overshadow "World Domination Phase II" that's embodied in Windows XP - 
"Your wallet is our wallet and our thoughts are your thoughts because we 
control the links". Of course the good news about XP is that it's a 
poster child for Linux.

> Pierre
> 

Dave LeBlanc