>I guess your ethic is that anything is okay as long as you don't get caught? Seems to be a common justification these days. <s>

Not really, at least I hope not. It was just a suggestion that what _you_ do with _your_ property is not the business of MS or anybody else. It is your property, you know, and you can hack it to death. As long as you do not cause MS damage, it has no claim on you -- because MS always has to prove two things in any claim against you: (1) that you did something contrary to the license adn (2) that MS was damaged or is reasonably likely to be damaged thereby. In almost all cases, MS will fail on (2). And I doubt MS actually cares. What it is trying to do with its license is prevent competitors from stealing its work product -- I'm not a competitor, I'm a customer.

>1) It's not a question of whether the licensing agreement is "fair." So far as I've been reading the Courts, until recently, have often disallowed shrink wrap licensing as constituting meaningful contractual agreement. But, more often it is being accepted. BTW, ACM as an organization does a good job reporting on legal sorts of issues surrounding our profession.

Yes, I read ACM and other reporters regularly -- or as regularly as I have time for. The form of the licensing is not, I think, the issue. I have no objection to the shrink-wrap license. It's reasonable under the circumstances. But to say that the form of license is agreeable does not mean that all of the terms of the license are going to be upheld in all circumstances.

These licenses are in effect a form of contract know as an adhesion contract -- they are not negotiated for at arms length by equally matched parties. There's an 800 lb. gorilla on one side, and wimpy li'l chicken me on the other. To a large extent the terms of the license are imposed by a monopolist who in essence says "I got the only game in town. If you want to play, here are MY rules." VFP is not fungible like an automobile. If I develop a dislike for Ford, there's always GM. No so here. These kinds of contracts _can_ be enforced, but often are not if they are not fairly drawn. So fairness is an issue and I suspect will increasing be THE issue.

>2) I'm not going warrant or even be able to smile at someone hacking an EXE of mine. If they own the source code, that's one thing. But otherwise, no, it can only cause serious business liabilities (just as a start).

I don't necessarily like it in many circumstances. (I suspect your serious business liablity will be limited as against the person doing the hacking, however.) But I also don't like it when someone sells me something that does not work as advertised. Indeed, by one not so generous interpretation -- such a transaction is fraud. And I am getting very, verty tired of being an unwilling beta tester for MS.

>3) Wrapping someone's EXE is one thing. Hacking the EXE is...well, hacking.

Hacking can be malicious, or harmless. I cannot beleive you have not hacked VFP. You don't want to know how it works? I guess I have a definition of "hacking" that permits me to inquire where the inquiry is harmless to the licensor. Don't forget that in its original meaning, "hacking" merely meant taking something apart to see how it worked. The fact that a few teen-age idiots have given hacking a bad name does not mean that I am required to change my understanding of the term after all these many years. In fact I just finished reading a pretty good (if lengthy) book by Granor and Roche in which they could not have found out as much as they did about VFP without a little harmless hacking.

If an advertised feature of VFP does not work as stated, and I can figure out a way to make it work, I will. And I will share that information with anyone who asks -- including MS, not that it will.

If MS does not like it, it can come to Nebraska and sue me. I can virtually guarantee I'll win. In Nebraska we have such a thing as an implied warranty of merchantibility and of suitability for the intended purpose -- warranties that cannot be waived. They are very nice for consumers. If I can show that a feature does not work as documented, and I can show damage resulting therefrom, I can make a lot of money and establish a precedent -- which is why MS will not come to Nebraska and sue me. Thus, it is doubtful that any term of the license that seeks or has the effect of preventing me from making my .exe work better for my own use is going to trigger any legal liability.

In other words, I do not think that by writing words in a license, MS has made some law. Some of the things in the license may become the law, but much will not. MS has its interpretation of what those words mean, and I have mine. If it seeks to impose its interpretation on me, it's in for a fight. It takes a court to determine what interpretation will control.

And, Nancy, I'm really not arguing with you. We merely have different points of view. Mine is seasoned by more than a decade before juries in courtrooms, and I believe that by now I have a little bit of an idea how the process works.

regards,