Microsofts Latest License Agreement…
A friend (no, I’m not saying which one) sent me these license agreements to the free copy of VB.NET you can get if you watch and rate some movies. They license agreement is pretty scarry. In general, it forbids you from creating open source apps, releasing benchmarks against .NET or any other project (like Mono), and other generally scarry stuff.
Here’s the quote about redistributing (removed all the legalease):
3.1 General Distribution Requirements.
(a) If you choose to redistribute Sample Code, Redistributable Code, or SMC (collectively, the "Redistributables") as described in Section 2, you agree:
* to distribute the Redistributables only in object code form
[no source code]
* that the Redistributables only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms
[Don’t try and create something, then compile it again with Mono]
* to display your own valid copyright notice which shall be sufficient to protect Microsoft’s copyright in the Software
[No public domain software]
* to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend Microsoft from and against any claims or lawsuits, including attorney’s fees, that arise or result from the use or distribution of the Licensee Software
[My emphasis. If your code blows up, then you will defend Microsoft against any charges…what about a bug in the .NET code?]
3.2 Additional Distribution Requirements for Certain Redistributable Code.
* Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE). If you redistribute MSDE you agree to comply with the following additional requirements: (a) [cut] (b) Licensee Software shall not substantially duplicate the capabilities of Microsoft Access or, in the reasonable opinion of Microsoft, compete with same;
[Don’t try and write a replacement to Access if youre using MSDE.]
* unless Licensee Software requires your customers to license Microsoft Access in order to operate, you shall not reproduce or use MSDE for commercial distribution in conjunction with a general purpose word processing, spreadsheet or database management software product, except for the exclusive use of importing data to the various formats supported by Microsoft Access.
About the Benchmarks:
3.4 Benchmark Testing. You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the .NET Framework component of the Software to any third party without Microsofts prior written approval.
[If they don’t like the results, you can’t publish them…sounds familiar, eh?]
/Ducks
Does anyone know if the commercial version of VB.NET/.NET SDK is the same?
If anyone is interested, you can read both license agreements here (eula.txt is a little messed up, had a bunch of NULL bytes added to it. I removed most of them with KHexEdit, but there’s probably a few I missed): http://www.wildgardenseed.com/Taj/eula