[Ecommerce] Microsoft's EULA

Tue Apr 22 12:51:01 2003

Thanks to Jonathan Franklin, Associate Law Librarian for the link to an 
interesting story regarding Microsoft's EULA.  Can Microsoft's EULA stop 
people from running Microsoft applications on Linux-based computers 
instead of Windows-based computers?
See the article at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/30325.html

MS legal threat derails Foxpro on Linux demo
By John Leyden
Posted: 17/04/2003 at 18:42 GMT

Microsoft has enraged the developer community after a Redmond executive 
last week threatened a software developer to prevent him from 
demonstrating a Microsoft application running on Linux.

Whil Hentzen, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was to have presented a seminar 
showing how to run Microsoft's Visual FoxPro on Linux at the Bay Area 
Association of Database Developers last Wednesday.

But prior to the demonstration Hentzen received a call from a Microsoft 
marketing manager telling him that he would be in violation of the EULA 
(End User Licensing Agreement) for VFP if he demonstrated (or ran) the 
development tool on Linux.

After the brief conversation with Ken Levy, Microsoft's Visual FoxPro 
marketing manager, Hentzen decided to abandon the practical 
demonstration from his talk. Levy had contacted Hentzen after reading a 
paper on the subject, which Hentzen had edited.

The situation is confusing because Hentzen had done the demonstration 
before, with no problems. Also other developers had been led to believe 
from Microsoft that "as long as licenses were in order" running VFP on 
Linux as developer environment was permissible.

Hentzen has written to Microsoft asking for clarification to this 
conflicting advice. He told us this afternoon he was yet to receive a 
reply.

Hentzen wants to know firstly if developers can run VFP on a Linux as a 
developer environment, providing the appropriate license has been paid. 
He also wants to know the terms on which applications developed using 
VFP can be distributed.

The suggestion every Linux machine running VFP-created aps would need a 
VFP license. For Windows, only the development machine needs to have a 
VFP license.

"It appears that Microsoft is tying the tie its applications (developer 
tools) to their operating system," Hentzen told us.

"Given the legal difficulties that Microsoft has encountered over the 
years, we don't believe that this is legal, and thus we don't believe 
that this is the intent of the EULA," he added.

Microsoft is trying to get people to use Visual Basic, instead of 
FoxPro, because the former is a bigger money spinner for the company, 
Hentzen believes.

FoxPro is a database and development language purchased by Microsoft in 
1992, and now known as Microsoft Visual FoxPro (VFP).

The technology allows developer to create an executable which can then 
be distributed (along with a support library dll) to an unlimited number 
of end users.

Reg reader Nick Causton tells us: "Within the FoxPro community there has 
been a lot of discussion recently about running VFP applications on 
Linux instead of Windows, no one seriously believed that Microsoft could 
prevent them from doing this."

Hentzen's demonstration follows on from work by other developers who 
have been able to get VFP to run on Linux using WINE.

"This now works quite well with the last few problems currently being 
addressed and there are now a number of people demonstrating this at 
seminars/conferences," he adds.

Developer Chet Gardiner, who attended the meeting, writes: "MS won't 
market it [VFP] for Windows applications, even those for which it's the 
best tool. Now M$ won't let us run it on any other OS, especially the 
one that's going to kick their butts."

"They are so interested in owning everyone's desktop that don't they see 
that in this way they could sell a whole lot of VFP stuff to other 
programmers and make some money out of it," he adds. Ž

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- Jonathan

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Manon Anne Ress
Consumer Project on Technology
www.cptech.org
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
manon.ress@cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176