Comparing Microsoft's EULA and the GPL
Posted Apr 23, 2003 15:46 UTC (Wed)
by mkc (guest, #2047)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 23, 2003 17:42 UTC (Wed)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link]
This is the only way to look at proprietary license, since they divide communities into non-cooperating individuals. The GNU GPL requires a newer approach. I won't use many of the rights the GNU GPL gives me. I'm a programmer but that doesn't mean I'm going to delve into the source of every program on my system. *It's not so important that an idividual has certain rights, it's that Everyone has these rights under Free Software licenses* If people want mozilla to have an Ad-blocking feature, only one person has to write it and hundreds of thousands get to use it. MS is anti-community, a sharing, helping community doesn't help their business model. If a community of one million people all use a Free OS such as GNU/Linux, the whole community will notice the OS improving (and in ways that they want). If the same community all purchases a copy of MS Windows and MS Office then the community would be $500million out of pocket and Gates&Friends would be even richer. Ciaran O'Riordan
Posted Apr 23, 2003 19:08 UTC (Wed)
by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
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Posted Apr 23, 2003 21:55 UTC (Wed)
by taniwha (guest, #49)
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Posted Apr 23, 2003 22:06 UTC (Wed)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link]
Without an explicit grant of permission to redestribute, you have to assume that you have no permission to redistribute. Fair use provides exceptions for such uses
as review and commentary, so the author of the paper is presumably safe.
Posted Apr 25, 2003 2:26 UTC (Fri)
by conz (guest, #4784)
[Link]
Server is hopelessly slashdotted, but you can read a text version here
(or type "comparing gpl eula" into google).
Comparing Microsoft's EULA and the GPL
I only had time to scan the doc but I think it made the common mistake of investigation from the individual point of view.Comparing Microsoft's EULA and the GPL
I'm actually curious now as to the legal status of MicroSoft's EULA document itself. It doesn't say anything internally, so far as I can tell. It doesn't seem to contain even a copyright notice. One might presume, then, that you could make and use a derivative license based on it without any legal problems (of course, the derived license wouldn't apply to the software you get from MicroSoft, so this doesn't let you meaningfully change the license). It would be ironic if the MicroSoft EULA (as opposed to software licensed with it) were Free (as in Software), as the GPL is not.Comparing Microsoft's EULA and the GPL
The default status of any document is "copyright, all rights reserved", so I believe the GPL itself is still freer than the MS EULA. I believe the implications of that are if it wasn't for fair use, the analysis and discussion of the EULA would be illegal. (Usual IANAL disclaimer :)
Comparing Microsoft's EULA and the GPL
Comparing Microsoft's EULA and the GPL
If someone can provide a mirror for the document, and post a link here, it would be appreciated.Comparing Microsoft's EULA and the GPL: Mirrors welcome