OT: click license (was Re: Software Licensing and Sanity (was...))

[Fairlight]

On Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 01:39:30PM -0700, after drawing runes in goat's blood,
Anthony Terrible cast forth these immortal, mystical words:
> Basically you can challenge anything. I think most software licensing is
> illegal and wouldn't hesitate in challenging it if I had a reason to. You go
> to a hospital for surgery or cell phone contract, you sign a contract that
> says if there is any dispute you have to go to arbitration. Well that clause
> is illegal and won't stand up in court. That amount's to taking away your
> right to trial in a court of law which no one can take away any of your
> rights. If the contract is illegal it doesn't matter if you sign it or not
> it's still illegal. If those "contracts" you sign before surgery would stand

Well, it may or may not be ruled entirely legal.  I've seen contracts that
state that if any clause is deemed illegal, the remaining portions will
remain in full force.  I assume that was just stating the obvious to cover
their arses so people knew up-front that was the case.

> up in court then doctors could never be sued for malpractice and we all know
> that's not true. I don't believe software is in a class all of it's own. As

I'm sure people in PA would not dispute the malpractice issue.  :(

> long as I'm not copying their product and reselling it what I do with it is
> my business. I can change it modify it any way I want. I also think I could
> modify software and resell it as modified software as long as I bought an
> original copy every time I made a sell. There are too many instances of this
> in many many industries and it's not illegal so I find it hard to believe
> that it would be with software.

Yeah, but even if you're fully in the right, the cost of defending it in
court is another thing entirely.  Someone can basically just bury you in
paperwork and steamroll you with money and watch you fold.  It really
depends who has the burden of proof.  Not being a lawyer, I'm not sure
which side that is.

There could be legitimate reasons (besides legalese) why someone would not
want you doing that, and would actually sue to keep you from doing that.
Basically, if you take someone's product, modify it, and then for whatever
reason disappear, then they might try going back to the original company
for support.  Some companies barely support their own products, much less
3rd party modifications.  They don't want to deal with it.  They also don't
want to contend with a potential image of their product not being what it
should be, or doing things (like crashing, screwing up data, etc.) that it
shouldn't--and wouldn't if it hadn't had mods made by a third party.

I can see this as being a valid -point-.  However, I don't see a need to
litigate over it.  If someone mods OneGate, for instance, well they have
the source, they're free to do so, but if I run a diff on it and anything
but the installation substitutions differ from whichever version they're
on, well I know whose fault it is and isn't, don't I?  I then have the
option of offering to help them, or telling them politely that something
wasn't official and I don't support that "configuration" and never did,
since it was unauthorised.  Personally, I'd go for the former--it'd be a
good revenue addition.  There's something about the Japanese or Chinese (I
forget which) symbol for "crisis" being a combination of two...one of which
is "opportunity".  

But I know what I'm doing with my own code.  Many places have tech support
so far removed from production and development that they barely know what
files are part of a distribution, much less the contents of the file.  Some
places have support staff that knows only what's in the database of known
bugs and solutions, and if it's not in there you're out of luck until
someone with a clue can get back to you--if ever.  I suppose it's easier
to just preemptively litigate people into the ground if that's someone's
business model.  You ever try to get to talk to an engineer with some
places?  Ye gods.  I actually was administering a site that got blacklisted
for email acceptance by AT&T WorldNet.  It was my job to get them cleared.
I called them up and I must have waded my way through nine people before
the tenth--a supervisor, no less--told me that this was handled by
'engineers' in another complex in another building (it may have even been
another state, as I recall...).  I said fine, give me the phone number or
transfer me.  Their response...sorry, I have to pause to laugh hysterically
here because to this day it cracks me up...their response was that the
department in question didn't have phones.  I said, "You're AT&T...American
TELEPHONE and Telegraph, and you're trying to tell me that you don't have a
PHONE in an important department like that?!"  The answer was a deadpan
yes, which must have been a bald-faced lie.  I was told yet again to simply
email the complaint.  I finally gave up and did just that, having spent
over an hour wading through useless morons like the cordwood they may as
well have been.  Useless as TooB.

<vent>

Which is about the situation I'm in now with BellSouth.  My phone line went
wonky on Friday afternoon.  I have a continuous loud hum, I have to use
multiple devices going off-hook to actually clear the line to get a dial
tone, and I can hear jackhammering that I've correlated to ring-signals,
pulse dialing sounds, as well as modem noise, depending on when I am
on during a call.  The last representative I talked to even heard the
jackhammer sound repeatedly, and all have said they can hear the hum on
their end.  My incoming calls may or may not hit voicemail (we tried once
and it simply said the customer wasn't available, although it worked on
either side of that).  They got the report from me at 4:30pm Friday when I
discovered this.  They said it would be fixed by 5pm Saturday.  Saturday,
it wasn't fixed by 3pm, I called, they said it was getting short but
it was still scheduled.  Nada.  Sunday goes by and their offices were
actually closed most of the day.  At one point, about 4pm, I'd guess,
I tried it and the line was entirely -dead-.  Then it came back later
with the same symptoms.  I called in the wee hours today and they said
that a regular repair guy tried fixing it but it's a cable problem and
he couldn't get at it, so they were having a lineman come out to fix
it.  (Keep in mind this is a -completely- external problem--they have it
traced and it has nothing to do with access to my jacks or anything even
on the building...I'm told it's on the main cables somewhere, and they've
verified this four times.)  They said 5pm today.  I just spoke to them
-again- at 5:45pm and they said that it was noted as a "could not fix"
but with a first-thing-in-the-morning dispatch to be fixed no later than
10am tomorrow.  I have a call-back coming from a supervisor.  Considering
this now makes five days going without a service for which I am paying and
which I am not receiving adequately, there will be seven kinds of hell to
pay if it's -not- fixed by tomorrow.  One of these will be a very nice
and warm letter to the PSC--which will probably fall on deaf ears because
the PSC is by and large in the pocket of BellSouth, barring two rulings
in the last five years, both of which related to DSL...over which recent
legislation just stripped them of any power whatsoever--the FCC is now the
only recourse you have regarding DSL disputes in Kentucky.  Thankfully this
is "just" my voice line that's affected.

I was told that I get an automatic credit for each day it's not fixed.
Frankly, I'd rather -have my phone back-!!  These people remind me of
"Scrooged":

     "Fire them, Claire!  They're incompetant!"

     "You can't fire them, they're volunteers!  Besides, it's Christmas."

     "They're -volunteers- because nobody would HIRE them, they are 
      -incompetant-!  They're like this every day of the year, I -guarantee- 
      it!"

I'm ready to ask BellSouth if they've tried staples.  :)

Sorry.  I know it's even further OT.  I'm soooo frustrated right now.
The -only- good part about this is that my DSL is working fine.  Go figure.
When I first got it, I had -no end- of trouble until I put microfilters on
the other jack in here because just bridging the voice circuit was killing
DSL due to a rogue Caller ID box throwing the entire circuit.  With this
going on, I'm surprised my DSL is working at all, but it's actually in
better shape today than it's been in a few months.

I hate telecom.  Hate it, hate it, hate it!

If they screw up DSL when fixing my voice line, I hope they're at peace
with their gods.  :)

</vent>

Oh, and as a sidebar that may actually be relevant to some here, I recall
Tony Ryder having problems with VPN over his DSL a few months back.  I
-think- we traced that to his circuit being PPPoE and the extra
encapsulating layer making VPN not viable, when it would work fine from his
colleague's bridged DSL.  When I asked someone more knowledgeable about it,
I was told that the PPPoE encapsulation may in fact affect that and
probably would, it pretty much verified it as far as I was concerned.  

Well anyone thinking about going to the 3mbit DSL service who is currently
using VPN's should think twice if they're using BellSouth lines.
Apparently even with business DSL customers they refuse to do any non-PPPoE
connections on their 3mbit service--at least that's the case in Kentucky.
No bridged at all here for 3mbit, from what I'm told.  Something to at
least research first.  Well BellSouth themselves -only- does PPPoE with
FastAccess, but I have a BellSouth line resold via my ISP, and my ISP does
it bridged--or did before BellSouth cracked down on how the circuits are
implemented.  They're dong all future residential connections as PPPoE on
any speed, and 3mbit is PPPoE on 3mbit, even for business.

mark->
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