My feeling is that if your app is working, there is no need to panic
and abandon all that good, solid code because they finally made official
what many of us have sensed for quite some time. Given the number of really
smart people who use Fox, I'll bet that even if Microsoft doesn't do it,
someone will figure out a way to make VFP run on future OSs. Remember, the
fast CPU fix didn't come from Microsoft, but it enabled old Fox 2.x apps to
run on hardware well past the lives of the products.
---
If you look in the VFP EULA:
"Section 4.
You may not:
* work around technical limitations in the software"
I think you must admit that this is the equivalent of disabling your
software i.e you can't use it legally, and it covers a number of other
scenarios.
All Microsoft have to do is to place a "technical limitation" on the
software - whatever that means to them at the time.
Yes, I admit that this would be unlikely (I hope) but it shows what you
agree to when you accept the EULA. Just what is a "Technical Limitation"?
---
UK law (which overrides the EULA :0 ) says that you can reverse
engineer any software to resolve a bug.
The killer is that you dont own the tools just licence them and they
have the right to cancel your licence at any time for any reason. This
is the same for nearly all business software (in volume terms very
little is released outside this licencing model yet).
In the UK you can challenge this as being punitive but I dont know of a
case going to court.
---
Have you got big enough pockets to take a test case to court?
I guess not and that is where M$ will always win out - unfortunately.---
"It's great to see the brain-dead requirement of having to uninstall
previous versions has been removed. However, there are some really
bizarre new phrases added. Rush Strong points out the weirdest: "You
may not.. work around technical limitations in the software," Excuse
me? That's how I have made my living for the past fifteen years. VFP
doesn't include your inventory system, but that's a technical
limitation I can help you work around. Yes, it's true that DROP TAG
ALL will remove all relations, but I know of a product that works
around that technical limitation� VFP crashes when used with some HP
drivers, but there's a technical work-around on the Microsoft
KnowledgeBase that lets me work around this technical limitation."
"I find it hard to believe that such a silly requirement could be
enforced in court. On the one hand, OJ was found innocent and Sacco
and Vanzetti executed. On the other, Microsoft was found guilty,
guilty, guilty. I have neither the money nor the interest in finding
out what is and isn't enforceable in the EULA! But I think a lawyer at
Microsoft needs to be flogged for writing such nonsense."---Once MS started putting silly, meaningless phrases in their license,
it was obvious they were not interested in doing business with people
who wanted to use their product. Imagine your corporate attorney
asking you "Did you work around any technical limitations in the
software in the course of developing this application?"
No comments:
Post a Comment