I remember something along the lines of: in order for a contract to have the element of compulsion (or be enforceable or something), it cannot be based on a falsehood (or false declaration or something along those lines) from business law (granted this was years ago).

Perhaps if MSFT had stated:

(ii) that the Redistributables will only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms;

actually the above still can be interpreted as meaning they will only function correctly under Windows platforms so perhaps the below would be more precise if this is what MSFT intended:

or

will only be operated in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms;



>It's a truly bizarre sort of statement. We are actually agreeing to what appears to be a statement of fact (normally an easy thing to which to agree), but is, in reality, a statement of misinformation. Can we, in law, be bound to agree under contract to something that is untrue?
>
>Could we agree, for example, in a contract, to something like:
>
>... you agree: (ii) that human lungs only operate in a vacuum;
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>Could a court even be expected to take such a contract seriously?
>
>Alan
>
>>>Here's the quote:
>>>
>>>(a) If you choose to redistribute Sample Code, or Redistributable Code (collectively, the "Redistributables") as described in Section 2, you agree: (ii) that the Redistributables only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms;
>>
>>Which is quite interesting because no where does it prohibit you from trying to run it on other platforms. This could be contrued to imply you just agree that Microsoft is only warranting that the redistributables work in conjuntion with Windows. Now if it said, "are only allowed to operate" then they are explicitly tying the product to Windows.