Subject: Re: [open-source] Sun to start charging for Star Office
To: None <netbsd-users@netbsd.org>
From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon@widomaker.com>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 03/21/2002 22:23:13
On Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 03:49:55PM -0500, Ian P. Thomas wrote:

> 	I'd check out the License for XP before running rDesktop with it.  
> Microsoft now wants you to have a License for the machine that is 
> remotely accessing the Windows XP box.  It's in the EULA.  I'd give the 
> paragraph and section, but I don't have it in front of me at the moment.

What do you do though, in a state where a EULA is not legal?  I have
been told it's the same as shrink-wrap licensing, and is illegal in
most states.  You cannot force a customer to adhere to a license he
cannot see before purchase, or is forced into accepting as part of
another system/product/software/etc.

Imagine for a moment, if the state required me to report taxes to their
web site, and the web site required Windows.  I don't accept their
license, and yet the law requires me to use it.  Where do you go
from there?

I mention this, because we are rapidly heading for exactly this kind of
mess.  Virginia already makes it difficult to get to their site without
the "latest and greatest" web "standards", and I cannot imagine that we
are far away from mandatory use of the net for government business.

-- 
UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza__________________________________shannon@widomaker.com