That is a very good question. I have to admit that until all the fur started flying here in Canada with the MS led anti piracy consortium, I got sloppy in reading them myself. I read them now. About the only time I still don't bother too much about it is with standard licensing such as GNU and some of the other free software agreements.

Considering that the maximum penalty for software 'piracy' is worse than that for most violent crimes, I think they've become worth reading.

To give you another strange example, in Visual Studio.net, there are separate EULAs for the MS product and for Crystal Reports. The MS license allows you to put the software on more than one computer if you are the only user, and the Crystal license allows you to put it on 2 computers, as long as one of them is a laptop (it's that specific). Since I don't use a laptop, I can install VS.net at home and at work, but I can only install Crystal at one of those locations. I hope with the next version of VS that Microsoft lays down the law and demands Crystal use a similar EULA - unless of course, it's like the VFP8 license 8-( .

Alan

>I wonder how many people in the general population actually read the EULAs anylonger considering how many are forced on you everyday?
>
>
>>Jim, I think you're probably right about that. In fact MS is probably the major player, and here they go creating a EULA that everybody feels obligate to ignore.
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>>I'm going to have to think long and hard about this. On principle, the idea of deliberately contravening the EULA bothers the heck out of me, and I feel it's no good arguing that I had no choice but to contravene it. I do have a choice.
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>>I'd love for MS to change this stupid wording because I do want to get VFP8, but as of right now, I'm just not comfortable with the idea of clicking 'YES' to agree to a EULA that I know I have no intention of living up to.
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>>Alan
>>
>>>>Agreed. Developer licenses cannot be identical to end-user licenses for a myriad of reasons. Also, since I don't plan on 'mass-producing' apps in both VFP7 and VFP8 to the public, I'm not going to worry about it!
>>>
>>>Maybe we're a little more sensitive about this here in Canada, because there is considerable anti-piracy activity in the media here. Not so much as out-and-out campaigns, but as tacked on 'notices' all over the place.
>>>So we can just picture some 'audit' suddenly sprung and an 'easy' finding of non-compliance. And neither ignorance of the law nor assinineness of a contract hold up well in court.
>>>
>>>And I must relate that I had one document that was very differently rendered in Word97 versus Word 2000, so I can say that "end-user" products are not immune either (I simply kept the document (80+ pages) in Word97 after spending half a day trying to "fix" it in Word 2000.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>Tracy
>>>>
>>>>>I agree with you here. The lawyers who wrote the EULA don't understand the needs of the developers. I'm guessing that the "you can't use" statement is going to be standard on lots of MS software going forward. I can see it with Word or Excel, but it just doesn't make sense for developer's tools.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>I have VFP8 from the Universal MSDN membership. I am testing our VFP7 apps in VFP8 daily. I have already run into a few 'gotchas' that I had to change immediately using VFP7 to open the forms and make the changes because the forms would not even open in development mode in VFP8. I plan on continuing to use VFP7 only until I can release a version in VFP8 safely. Once that is accomplished, I no longer plan on using VFP7 to develop apps. Now if I purchased an upgrade license for VFP8 I would expect to be able to do the same. I have to agree that the EULA 'reads' that what i am doing would be illegal, but I do not think that is the intent and it would be a major turnaround for VFP licensing. You cannot stop completely using the previous version unless the newer version supports EVERYTHING verbatim that the previous version did and that is not the case. So the EULA makes no sense because developers could potentially find their existing VFP7 apps 'dead in the water' and forever
>>>>>stuck
>>>>>> in VFP7 if they cannot open them up in VFP7 to modify them to work in the newer VFP8 version legally. Hopefully I was clear on this. In summary, I do not think MSFT would intentionally create this type of problem for its developers so I choose to believe (stupid of me probably) that it is okay.
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>>>>>>Tracy
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