Hi Al,

I never read those EULA's anymore. First of all as a native non-english speaker, I have serious trouble in understanding these legal notices in the first place: I'm a developer and certainly not a lawyer.

Even if I did understand them fully, it gives me the problem that I can only read the EULAs when I purchased them. When not agreeing it is very difficult, if not, impossible to return the purchased software.

Here in holland, some of the legal rights conflict the dutch law, about licensing (don't ask me which rules, i'm not a lawyer), so how on earth I'm going to find out what this EULA realy means in practise. Anyways I'm not interested in EULAs but in programming, so please make these piece of paper understandable for mortals like me. Just a few rules in a few lines in understandable english. For legal purposes you also include the long complicated versions. And if I've purchased the upgrade, I only want to see the license for the upgrade, not for a NOT FOR RESALE, EDUCATION or FULL VERSION. Just keep it simple.

My dutch teatcher once said, if I have to guess what you mean to say, I guess wrong. IOW, the license must be clear or else you're not able to reserve any rights on it. In the case of upgrades, I'll to use the previous versions also, unless very clear marketed as such (thus not by use of a few words in a six pages long EULA (who reads them anyways ?).

I own a copy of Crystal Reports 8.5 Professional. Since I've had installed a free demo version of the developer version, I had all distribution files available. Later on, I discovered I did not have the rights to distribute them. However, The crystal runtimes where available as msm from installshield express, without any licensing notices. I've asked Seagate 3 times about the legal status of these msm. Never got an answer: If I have to guess, I'll guess wrong. So now I do distribute the runtimes without having the developer version.

As for microsoft products. I'm glad I do not have to worry, because I subscribe to the MSDN. I can use every product I want, install them on as many machines I want as long as I'm the only developer. Works for me.

IMO, all these LEGAL rights business, of not only software vendors, but also music companies is getting real sick. I think its time that some trail cases have to be done, to make it better.

Walter,