OFB Community Mailing Lists

[Don Parris]

On Sun, 01 May 2005 09:29:11 -0400
Frank Bax <fbax at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> At 08:48 PM 4/30/05, David Aikema wrote:
> 
> >Depends on what kind of MS license you have I think.  The OEM copies
> >that most people will get with their computers are not transferable in
> >this fashion, but if you buy a full retail edition, I think that the
> >product is then transferable.  Of course, I'm not a lawyer...
> 
> 
> Having purchased many OEM copies of Windows 98 and XP in the past, I can 
> tell you David is correct.  The vendor is obligated to sell a number of 
> components with the OEM disk/license.  I usually bought a complete system,
> 
> but I think minimum is something like: motherboard, CPU, RAM, (and perhaps
> 
> hard disk).
> 
> Frank
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________

Just out of curiosity, Have you tried the 2.0 beta of OOo yet,
Nathan?  It should work a bit better.

This is one reason I have such difficulty with restrictive EULAs.  I can
resell my old books, but cannot give away my old software CD.  It's pure
stupidity.  I should have that right with software.  EULAs often expand
beyond the bounds of what copyright was intended to accomplish.  To me, it
is an affront to freedom.

As a sidenote, check out Lessig's "Free Culture".  I'm willing to say a good
many people don't know what a "pirate" Walt Disney was.  Or for that matter,
how about your local cable company (at least the earliest ones)?  Cable was
really not so different from, say, Napster (redistributing content), even
though the implications are somewhat different.

I do not believe that Christians should violate EULAs.  Of course, I think
it's a bad idea to use software with such restrictive license terms to begin
with.

Don
-- 
evangelinux    GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/                   http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/
"Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime
anywhere."