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Archive | April, 2003
Why does your bag need to fly with you?
Here’s a great idea! After losing many hours having inspectors poke through bags filled with power supplies, hubs, cables, etc., and losing a precious pocketknife when the airline refused to let me check my bags, here’s a solution to rid yourself of the hassle. Finding Opportunity in Baggage Woes. “Working as long-haul bellhops, companies are picking up and delivering bags. Unencumbered passengers fly alone.” By Joe Sharkey at the New York Times: Business
Catching up with Wine – the usual SlashDot double-post
From Catching up with Wine on Slashdot
Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday April 22, @09:08AM
from the now-isn’t-that-strange dept.
An anonymous reader writes “TransGaming’s announcement of the availability of WineX 3.0 got a lot of pixel dust, but that wasn’t the only recent news about WINE. The Microsoft monopoly also reached out to touch the project when Whil Hentzen, a leading proponent of Visual FoxPro (VFP) development on Linux, was contacted by an Microsoft manager and told it was a violation of the VFP EULA to run it on Linux.” I guess thats one way to stop emulation. update Oh well, its a dupe. Whatever, it gives people something to complain about I guess 😉
Go, Taco, Go!
It is a duplicate posting, but it does point to a new article on the subject from Joe Barr over at LinuxWorld.
CoDe Magazine Focus: Visual FoxPro 8.0
From FoxCentral.Net: CoDe Magazine Focus: Visual FoxPro 8.0. “This special edition of CoDe Magazine focusing entirely on Visual FoxPro 8.0 which was significantly subsidized by Microsoft. This 72 page issue of CoDe Magazine contains detailed articles on Visual FoxPro 8.0 to complement upcoming technical whitepapers and content coming soon to the MSDN Library and the http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro Visual FoxPro Web site. The content is technical resources for developers who are evaluating or using Visual FoxPro 8.0. And all the articles are online at http://code-magazine.com/focus.”
Hmm. I was surprised when I heard that a “special edition” of CoDE magazine was being issued, and that it was subsidized by Microsoft. While I know the authors, editor and publisher personally, and have no doubt about their personal integrity, the idea of creating a magazine that looks like your regular edition but is in fact paid for by one of your largest advertisers has to bring out questions of journalistic conflict-of-interest. In addition, I find it strange that Microsoft chose this one magazine, and did not fund similar rollout editions of the competition, FoxTalk or FoxPro Advisor. I’m looking forward to the magazine and how they addressed these issues.
Whil gets Slashdotted!
Seems someone posted the news that Whil’s got a new page about the FoxPro EULA problem (mirrored here in case it’s still unavailable) and it got SlashDotted and promptly taken off the air. Looks like it is back now.
Edgar F. Codd, dead at 79
E. F. Codd and C. J. Date are responsible for much of the popularization of the relational database, arguably one of the most powerful tools for modeling data on a computer.
Here is his obituary from the Mercury News.
Visual FoxPro 8.0 Featured on Microsoft PressPass
From FoxCentral.Net: Visual FoxPro 8.0 Featured on Microsoft PressPass. A detailed press announcement called New Microsoft Visual FoxPro 8.0 Driven By Customer Feedback has been posted on Microsoft PressPass and submitted to journalists world-wide for education on Microsoft’s release of Visual FoxPro 8.0. The article contains quotes from Eric Rudder (senior vice president of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft), Brian Jones (vice president of DPRA Inc.), and a brief case study of an award winning Visual FoxPro application.
Visual FoxPro Web Site Updated
From FoxCentral.Net: Visual FoxPro Web Site Updated. “The Microsoft Visual FoxPro Web site has been updated with new information and links for Visual FoxPro 8.0. There are weekly updates planned for the Visual FoxPro Web site and next month the following is just some of the content added for Visual FoxPro 8.0: New Evaluation Guide, new whitepapers, new sample downloads, updated free downloadable VFP 8.0 OLE DB provider with small enhancements from the version included in Visual FoxPro 8.0, and more. Refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro for more details. “
I AM NOT A LAWYER, NOR DO I WANT TO BE
The ongoing difficulties with interpreting the Visual FoxPro EULA have brought forth clearly the problems with End User Licensing Agreements and the rights of consumers.
Last week, as part of installing a new cable modem, the technician needed to install software on my machine to activate the modem (I ensured he did remove it afterwards). As part of the install, a great big page of 4 point legalese popped up, to which he just clicked “Agree” and continued. Now, who is obligated to that license? Not me. I never touched the machine. Not him, the license was probably addressed to the owner of the box. However, I am probably liable for it, and I’ve got a lot less money to hire lawyers to debate it than the cable company does.
In the two most recent versions of Visual FoxPro, a number of the rules have changed, and I am sure most VFP developers are not aware of the rule changes:
- An upgrade now (in VFP8) requires that you uninstall the previous version of the software, nonsense to developer who need to support their customers. Link here, here and here.
- VFP8 (and 7 as well, I believe) can only be distributed using their MSM files and the Microsoft Installer technology. This is a limit by license, and not a technological hurdle. Many developers install their applications by dragging and dropping a few DLLs and registering a few of them. This, and technology that competes with the Microsoft Installer technology, appears to be improper.
- Microsoft runtime DLLs must run “in conjunction:” with the Microsoft Windows platform. I’m not sure what that means. On top of? On a machine with the OS installed (dual boot?)? Whil Hentzen’s taken the point postion on this question (as I blogged here and is waiting on an answer…
- On the flip side, it looks like the IDE can be installed on non-Microsoft Windows platforms, a loophole I expect to be closed soon. Running VFP on Wine is here , here and here.
- Finally, the ultimate question: is any of this enforceable? Can Microsoft tie their applications to their platform? Are EULAs and click-through licenses legal?
This is not what I get paid by my clients to figure out, although perhaps it must be, for the duration. I suppose clients need to be just as careful to follow the terms of OSI licenses as well.
Visual Studio 6.0 EULA
Visual Studio 6 EULA. First Post: Since there seems to be a lot of concern over the changes to Microsoft’s EULA, especially in regard to added restrictions on runtime distributables, I’ve posted the EULA from Visual Studio 6.0, of which VFP 6.0 was a part, and thus governs VFP 6.0 usage. Note that there are no restrictions on distributing royalty-free runtimes to non-Windows platforms. You may draw your own conclusions about the reasons such restrictions were added in later releases.
END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR MICROSOFT SOFTWARE… from OpenTech Recent Topics