Alan,

I agree, these licensing issues are a real nightmare. Especially when you're not a native english speaker.

You've mentioned that licensing software should be the same as with music. Well can you imagine:

1. You've to buy additional licenses for every CD player you play the CD on ?
2. You cannot let anyone else listen to your music ?
3. You cannot play music on a CD player X because the licence of Music Company Y

However, with the licensing of Music:
1. You'll have to pay additional fee's to play music in public places.
2. To me its unclear how I would get a new copy of a CD if my own one is broken.
3. It would be interesting to be able yo buy upgrades (new albums of the same artist).
4. If you think Software is expensive, well try to buy an album of popular artists in Holland. It's pure theft. Anywhere else in europe they're 20 - 50% less expensive. No wonder people are copying albums.


I agree, Licensing of software sucks. Therefore I don't read EULA's anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I violate licenses regulary, but there are some cases where I make exceptions. If I got a Dutch versions of Office XP, but want to install an english one, I won't acquire another license for that. If there is some uncertainty about licensing of a certain product, I'm not going to call the vendor anymore but use it under my interpretations of the license.

As for the upgrade license of VFP8, You don't think I'm going to deinstall VFP 8 when I want to use VFP 7 for existing projects do you ? The expectation of not having both versions working at the same time becomes purely technical and is only bugging the developer and is purely a M$ marketing move.

Do you think that any judge will agree with microsoft sueing you because you run a VFP application from a Linux server ? I think not.

Sure, the basic Items in a license (e.g. upgrade, about the number of users, expiring etc) makes lots of sense, but I refuse to be belittled and confirm to all and every detail.

As I have a MSDN subscription, I got rid of a lot of these licensing issues, but for those who do have not, I don't think you'll need consult a lawyer to read the license.

Walter,