"in my environment...... The thing that
does concern me about the FSF in
particular and the GPLv3........ from a
corporate buyer's perspective.... a huge
concern.... this boogeyman doesn't
exist.... This whole debate.....
Sounds like your biggest problem is
deciding what the whole debate is. You
do a great job of walking the fence and
jumping from one side to the other.
Perhaps, if you read something besides
the Microsoft propaganda, it would
improve your perspective?
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-275366.htmlSecurity problems open Microsoft's
Wallet
Software flaws in the security of
Microsoft's Passport authentication
system left consumers' financial data
wide open, causing the software giant to
remove a key service from the Internet
to protect people from having their data
stolen, a company representative
acknowledged Friday.
http://news.com.com/More+WMF+problems+for+Microsoft/2100-1002_3-6024931.htmlJust days after Microsoft rushed out a
patch to fix a critical Windows flaw
related to the processing of Windows
Meta File images, two more problems with
the component were flagged.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=8411Yet more security problems hit Microsoft
Windows products
ISA Server 2000 and all versions of
Windows OS
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/423Vista's EULA Product Activation Worries
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:6ZyBv1YKMasJ:www.camtp.uni-mb.si/opensource/GPL-EULA/comparing_the_gpl_to_eula.pdf+Problems+with+Microsoft+EULA&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=usIn this analysis, we review both the
Microsoft EULA and the GPL used for most
Free/Open Source
Software. We particularly look at what
the similarities and differences are
between these two
licenses. We will also try and provide a
quantitative determination of what
positives both licenses
carry for you, the user, along what the
negatives are.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2002/10/24.6.shtmlMicrosoft EULA May Conflict With More
Federal Privacy Laws
http://boston.internet.com/news/article.php/1485861Is Microsoft Licensing Forcing Banks to
Break The Law?
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_thread/thread/a2f97f526cd51aa7/fd345b9bdf095551%23fd345b9bdf095551Activation for used WinXP OEM, any
problems?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061019/102225.shtmlA Random Walk Through The Microsoft
Vista EULA
Dirty Tricks
Annexing the Public Domain
In 1995 a virtually unknown company
called Corbis purchased the Bettman
Archives, the world's largest private
collection of historical and newspaper
photographs. Corbis, a company founded
in 1989 and owned by Bill Gates, is also
actively negotiating with museums
worldwide for exclusive licenses to
electronically reproduce works of art
held in their collections. Since that
time, the Corbis "collection" has
swelled to over 20 million images.
The apparent purpose is to provide
Microsoft with access to a huge supply
of exclusive cultural "content" for its
web sites and multimedia CDs, and to
prevent others from obtaining similar
access. The rub is that Corbis now holds
exclusive reproduction rights to images
which are not copyrighted, but are in
held in the public domain. Gates has
seduced these museums, presumably with
promises of future residuals, into
veering from their missions as trustees
of our cultural legacies, and into
exploring the murkiest areas of "fair
use" practices and curatorial ethics.
The Protection Racket
The Business Software Alliance is
ostensibly a trade association that
tracks down pirated software on behalf
of its members in the software industry.
But the BSA mainly does Microsoft's
bidding, according to an investigation
conducted by Mother Jones Magazine.
According to the magazine, the BSA files
suits against offending organizations,
but quickly drops them when they agree
to sign deals to purchase Microsoft
software exclusively. The
article "Overseas Invasion" documents
cases of BSA blackmail in Europe, South
America and Australia.
A GRAB BAG OF DECEPTION, DISHONESTY &
HIGH-HANDED TACTICS
Privacy is Where You Find it
Microsoft managed to grab headlines with
their announced intentions to pull
company advertising from any web site
that doesn't publish a privacy
statement. So they're on our side of the
privacy issue, right? Well, that appears
to depend entirely on who's doing the
transgressing. Only months before, it
was discovered that Microsoft Office
secrets an identifier code in every
document -- a unique code that can trace
the file right back to the computer that
created it. Microsoft issued all the
standard denials in this instance, of
course, and promptly issued a "fix" for
Office. But now they apparently expect
us to accept the utterly unbelievable --
that the company is actually driving the
privacy issue in our behalf.
For stories on the Office privacy
invasion, see Pharlap Software and CNET.
For other blatant Microsoft privacy
hypocrisies, see Registration Under
Duress and Peeping Bill, on this page.
[26 June 1999]
In the final analysis, Bill Gates'
legacy will be money, not ideas.
Contrary to Net paranoia, Gates isn't
evil, just typical: another mogul run
amok, ultimately reined in by his own
arrogance -- and the ferociously
independent and resilient culture he
came so close to conquering.
JON KATZ, San Jose
Am I Blue?
On November 18, 1998 the digital
greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts
discovered that beta versions of
Microsoft's Outlook Express (which comes
free with Internet Explorer) were
automatically filing Blue Mountain's
e-mail greeting cards into the "junk"
folder rather than the "inbox." Shortly
afterwards, Blue Mountain Arts
discovered that Microsoft's WebTV
service was blocking their e-mail
greeting cards as well.
Why would Microsoft want to prevent
electronic greeting cards from being
delivered? It turns out that after an
unsuccessful attempt to purchase Blue
Mountain Arts, Microsoft started its own
electronic greeting card service.
The "bug" in Outlook Express appeared at
about the same time that Microsoft's
greeting card service began.
Coincidence? The Honorable Robert A.
Baines didn't think so, and granted a
preliminary injunction against Microsoft
to protect the delivery of Blue Mountain
Arts greeting cards. Microsoft reacted
to this injunction by removing the
e-mail filter from Outlook Express.
Microsoft claims to have attempted to
assist Blue Mountain with this problem,
but according to Blue Mountain Arts,
that assistance consisted mostly of
telling them to wait for the next
release of Internet Explorer at "an
unspecified date in the future."
References from Blue Mountain, IDG, and
Microsoft. [27 March 1999]
A Tangled Web
When the courts ordered Microsoft to
ship Windows without an integrated
Internet Explorer, the
company "complied" by offering a
non-functional version of the OS,
claiming that the browser was now so
completely integrated into Windows to
remove it was tantamount to "breaking"
the operating system. But in Federal
court in December, Princeton University
Professor Edward Felten handily debunked
this claim, demonstrating a program
written by two graduate students that
removes MSIE functionality from Windows
98 -- a feat worthy of Houdini, if
Microsoft is to be believed.
Ah, but that's not the real dirty trick.
In cross examination, Microsoft's
attorney attempted to show that Felten's
IE exorciser had indeed broken Windows,
charging that the program was
incompatible with the Microsoft Windows
98 update web site. The attorney
explained that Microsoft had problems
with Felton's program since it was
turned over to them in the discovery
process in September.
No, answered Professor Felten, the
program had worked properly since it was
completed in the spring, except for a
period in December when Microsoft
altered the update web site, temporarily
disabling the program and requiring him
to change it. This exchange led
presiding Judge Penfield Jackson to
inquire of the witness, "Are you telling
me that as part of discovery you
provided this code in September,
whereupon there appears to have been
product changes by Microsoft?" Professor
Felten concurred with the Judge's
assessment.
As reported on ZDNet. [15 Dec 98]
Registration Under Duress
With the release of Office 2000,
Microsoft will introduce another
innovation in consumer abuse: mandatory
product registration. According to this
scheme, if a copy of Office 2000 remains
unregistered after 50 launches, it will
cease functioning on the 51st attempt --
and will remain disabled until the owner
calls Microsoft and tells them whatever
they want to know. Not only is the
company planning on invading the privacy
of its customers, they are unilaterally
restricting their ability to use a
product they've paid for by placing
arbitrary and insulting preconditions on
its use.
As reported in CNN, and elsewhere. [12
Nov 98]
Peeping Bill
Microsoft is now using its WebTV boxes
as an in-house consumer data-gathering
tool -- with "in house" defined as "in
customer's houses." Microsoft polls
WebTV boxes nightly to collect customer
web surfing and viewing habits --
statistics which in turn are sold to
advertisers. But there's more: When the
first Window CE television cable boxes
hit the market in 1999, they will invite
Microsoft's prying eyes into at least 5
million additional homes, and will be
armed with an even more comprehensive
ability to track customer viewing habits
and report them to advertisers. ?Mi casa
es su casa?
As reported in USA Today (Link no longer
functioning, but also reported by
ZDNet).
Smothering Freeware
Containing commercial competitors is one
matter, but undercutting the free
software movement is another -- one
Microsoft has apparently designated a
high priority. As a measure of the
perceived threat of freeware, witness
Microsoft's maneuvers to marginalize
Samba, the freeware application that
permits the Linux OS (a free Unix
derivative) to communicate with Windows
NT, 95 and 98, among others. The
combination of Linux and Samba can
obviate the need for Windows NT servers,
one of Microsoft's most coveted markets.
And that can't be allowed to happen.
Microsoft's stealth war against Linux
and Samba opened with the release of
Service Pack 3 for Windows NT 4. With
this release, Microsoft implemented a
subtle change to NT's communications
protocols, making it incompatible with
Samba. An adjustment to the Windows NT
registry can reverse the
incompatibility, but at the same time
Microsoft eliminated the instructions
for this fix from their website. In
fact, they went several steps further --
by erasing from the website every
reference to Samba and a previously
posted technical article.
Microsoft's company philosophy was never
more clear; competing technology, no
matter the source, cannot be allowed to
survive. Freeware like Samba may be
invulnerable to the usual marketing
ploys, but that won't stop Microsoft
from attempting to will it out of
existence.
As reported by Robert X. Cringely
