Software Licensing and Sanity (was Re: Moving from SCO to Suse Linux)

[Fairlight]

When asked his whereabouts on Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 03:03:14PM -0400,
Jay Ashworth took the fifth, drank it, and then slurred:
> 
> They do this precisely so that they have a legal leg to stand on to
> attempt to enforce a "License Agreement": if they just let you buy it,
> they would have no right to tell you what you could do with it.

I thought they do it this way so that they retain rights to it.  Otherwise
they'd be "selling" the software proper and lose their exclusive rights to
it.  IANAL, but I thought that was the whole crux of how we got into the
two nastiest words of the industry ("License Agreement") way back when, in
the first place.

That sneakwrap and clickwrap licensing has gotten to the point it has is
just a testament to people's willingness to take a bad idea to worse
extremes in the name of greed/power/whatever.  I mean, how can you agree to
something you haven't even had a chance to read up-front before purchase.
And try returning it after opening it if you don't agree.  Most will simply
ignore it entirely in those cases.

I wonder if anyone's ever challenged any EULA in court on the basis that
you've never signed a contract at all, and simple use of the product is not
enough to signify that you agree with the terms included therein.

> I'm merely asking for the vendor not to nail me down WRT product that
> isn't even their responsibility in the first place.  They would have no
> problems letting me continue to run the package if I didn't {want,have}
> to change OSs, and they support the new one, so I *really* can't see
> any justification at all for them wanting to treat a platform-to-platform
> license transfer as a new sale.  And I'm clearly not alone.

Definitely not.  *raises hand*

> It's been proven over and over again that if you don't shaft your
> customers, in general, they won't shaft you.

And that if you deliver a decent product at -reasonable- prices, they'll
line up to support it in pre-orders, not to mention throughout its life
cycle.

There's a reason both Diablo II and WarCraft III went gold or better in
pre-orders, while other companies can barely make their games float once
they hit the market.  Blizzard is really good on both fronts, and people
feel they're getting their money's worth.  That's not to say there's no
piracy of their software--there is, of course.  But they've certainly not
had the bad experience other vendors have.

John might be right about analogies failing.  In the software industry,
we've come to expect that when something comes out with a new version, we
pay to upgrade or get a whole new copy.  But I'm reminded of they physical
goods market--specifically S.C. Johnson with their Glade line of Plug-Ins.
Anyone else notice that originally they had the Plug-In, then came out with
the one that let you plug -through- to keep an outlet?  They they came out
with the scented oil ones and omitted the pass-through for a while and then
came out with a revised version of that.  Now there's some little motorised
dispersal unit they have, and they've omitted pass-through on that, and it
will probably come out in a few months.  I'm convinced that they're
deliberately trying to make people buy two units instead of one -every-
time, when they already know better.  And I find it patently ridiculous.
That wouldn't hold up in the software industry, surely.  

Oh, wait...Microsoft -did- just nuke the user:pass at host functionality for
URI's that is part of a standard -they signed off on-, all in order to fix
a ***display*** bug.  I wonder if they'll charge for putting the
functionality back in later?  :)

Rhetorical postulate to the contrary, it still wouldn't hold up in our
industry, so maybe looking at it analogically is not the best way to do it.
But it still seems wrong to me on so many levels.  I'll agree to politely
disagree with John on this.  I doubt we'll sway each other one way or the
other on this.  So yes, I'll still politely agree to disagree.  [And your 
forecast for Hell today is a balmy 29F, with 0% relative humidity...]
("Yeah, but it's a -dry- cold!")  

This industry can make you cynical really fast, if you think too hard about
what's actually going on.  *sigh* 

mark->
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