Mercurial loses a developer [LWN.net]

Interesting question

Posted Oct 1, 2005 5:22 UTC (Sat) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

Which brings me to the interesting question of who is agreeing to EULAs on company software installed on company equipment. The company, the employee, or both?

I've recently decided to stay away from crappy EULAs, which is most of them, since they have been enforced against me. However I had assumed by employer's software was their own problem.

Do I now have to argue with my manager, the IT staff, and possibly lose my job if I don't want to "sign" away my rights by installing something at work?

Interesting question

Posted Oct 1, 2005 5:54 UTC (Sat) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Well, pretty much, yes. The employer makes the pledge on behalf of those
working for it. In many cases, agreeing to abide by company policy, which
would include company policy regarding software they've signed EULAS for,
would be part of the employment contract/agreement. Even where it isn't,
the employer then has the choice of keeping the violating employee, or
continuing to use the software (and abiding by any clauses that survive
the termination of use of said software, no-compete clauses for a year or
whatever), or being sued. Guess which choice the employer is likely to
take?

Now, Larry McV has a reputation for taking this rather farther than at
least most in the FLOSS community can stomach, farther than other software
might, but regardless, one in that situation must be prepared to choose
between keeping their current job and keeping their current hobby, as
history HAS demonstrated that Larry is rather active in pursuing such
"violations" of his "license", and no company yet has been willing to
stand upto it and see who wins if it goes to court. (OSDL went farther
than others have, by refusing to kill Tridge's contract, but they ended up
losing the use of BitKeeper in the process. IMO, while the use of
BitKeeper did advance the kernel for a time, given Larry McV's attitude
vs. that of many kernel contributors, it had to happen some time, and when
it happened was as good a time as any. Glad the separation is over with
now!)

I think there are a lot in the community that wouldn't touch BK now, or
work for a company that did. That may or may not be BM's loss, but it's
certainly due to BM's attitude. Larry's obviously gambling that this
policy will be effective enough in keeping the FLOSS competition behind
him that it'll outweigh any loss from businesses choosing coders over his
product. Regardless of whether one believes in the inalienable rights of
Free Software or not, one must admit that as with other proprietary
software companies, the law is currently on Larry's side, giving him the
legal right to make those demands in exchange for use of his product,
regardless of whether he has the moral right to do so or not (given the
arguably inalienable rights of Free Software).

Duncan

Interesting question

Posted Oct 1, 2005 6:53 UTC (Sat) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

It seems you are assuming there is a company policy on EULAs. The extent of that policy is that the legal department has to approve of software licenses before purchase. It doesn't say anything about the employee acting for themselves or as an agent of the company. If I had to agree to MS EULAs personally I'd be put in a very difficult position. I don't want to quit my job and trying to fight something like the requirement to run Windows due to licensing terms is pointless (and I even work for a MS competitor) and would look completely silly.