Win2K SP3 EULA Legalities

[brackenwood]

I am not sure if the web-based subscription will be accepted by users but Application Service Providers{the other ASP} have been around a bit. I manage Citrix doing exactly that and the concept is ok. I think for businesses it might be a solution once security gets worked over. I can’t see home users who might only need to read documents sent to them and create simple papers for personal use. That is why I was blown away by OpenOffice when I loaded RH 8. I think it will be big in the home / personal market place.

I have been a Windows user for a long time and a Mac user for even longer and I am not thrilled with the EULA but have to use it for now. I was reluctant to switch from my Mac to Windows because of functionality I had, but over time I can do anything I need to on the PC. I am also working with Linux as much as I can so maybe some day I will make the switch again.

In the trade rags for M$ people I see more and more of their professionals screaming about either the price for their product and the EULA changes. There are loads of people sending M$ a message, so far there has been little change. We’ll see what the future holds.

[UpperCell]

Let me see if I can find some quotes or articles to back that up, I've heard it over and over again from people I considered experts, and from my point of view, it's perfectly reasonable, at least for buisnesses, to be forced to have always on inet to use these services, and you know ms will come up with a way to have a client prog that only works as itself, not through a browser. they will no doubt do this under the guise of 'the latest software' or 'the way todays buisness works' and other companies like corell will most likely be forced to develop similar services or their products will be considered out of date.

*IMPORTANT* Don't take my word for it, I'll try and get some stuff to back it up, if I can't just ignore my post it's pure speculation at this point.

[bballad]

Originally posted here by UpperCell
Let me see if I can find some quotes or articles to back that up, I've heard it over and over again from people I considered experts, and from my point of view, it's perfectly reasonable, at least for buisnesses, to be forced to have always on inet to use these services, and you know ms will come up with a way to have a client prog that only works as itself, not through a browser. they will no doubt do this under the guise of 'the latest software' or 'the way todays buisness works' and other companies like corell will most likely be forced to develop similar services or their products will be considered out of date.

*IMPORTANT* Don't take my word for it, I'll try and get some stuff to back it up, if I can't just ignore my post it's pure speculation at this point.

But see that’s where you and MS are wrong. In my industry we are required to guaranty customer data privacy. If suddenly there are untested (untested wit hour software) patches hitting our systems, and third parties accessing our server we are in violation of the law and face stiff penalties / loss of licensing that’s a very bad thing. The new MS EULA violates those regulations and if they where to enforce them we would be SOL so ya this is a very big concern.

And if you hadn't noticed MS patches have a bad habit of breaking other programs, this is why we test all patches on a secondary box first...if the patches are pushed at us without our knowledge we could be doing a lot of restoring from backups.

[darkes]

Originally posted here by bballad


But see that’s where you and MS are wrong. In my industry we are required to guaranty customer data privacy. If suddenly there are untested (untested wit hour software) patches hitting our systems, and third parties accessing our server we are in violation of the law and face stiff penalties / loss of licensing that’s a very bad thing. The new MS EULA violates those regulations and if they where to enforce them we would be SOL so ya this is a very big concern.

And if you hadn't noticed MS patches have a bad habit of breaking other programs, this is why we test all patches on a secondary box first...if the patches are pushed at us without our knowledge we could be doing a lot of restoring from backups.

Well, I agree absoultely.

Why should MS have the ability to update your software without your knowledge?

If they say they are going to charge for MS/Office on line then fair enough - you can always look for alternative products..

[phishphreek]

You are already paying too much for your software... there are plenty of opensource alternatives... right now.
Unless m$ gets their way with palladium...

OpenOffice is fine for me! It does everything I need at both work and for school. It just doesn't have an e-mail client or database client. There are plenty of other alternatives for those too... who said those have to be in your "office suite"?

[bballad]

/*rant
Alternatives are all nice and what not ...and we are looking into them but what it comes down to is this. If MS has there way and this EULA is enforced I will have a bunch of systems running critical apps that can't be updated. I will have a bunch of systems that where paid for that are not at EOL that can't be fixed, and that have security holes that should be fixed. It will take a long time to rewrite all of our internal code in another language (its in vb..am I going to have to retrain the programmers in perl..that takes time..hire new ones that takes time) during that time we are sol In the mean time I make sure the firewall is configed correctly and hope to hell no one decides to take their laptop home and gets it infected with something.

It would be nice if I could expect patches for systems that I paid for although we are looking at the enabler program that will let us not agree to the EUAL and still install the software.
rant*/

sorry for the rant its been a long day disscuessing this issue with the department. The devlopers are of the mind to ignore the whole isue and hope the regulators don't investigate

[Director]

Originally posted here by bballad
sorry for the rant its been a long day disscuessing this issue with the department. The devlopers are of the mind to ignore the whole isue and hope the regulators don't investigate

You know -- I would never recommend that. My boss though, (EVP of Ops) now he's another story....

Director