Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (59 mails)

[Derek Harding <derek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 19 March 2002 02h02, Michael Brown wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Phil Driscoll wrote:
> > Just spotted this on slashdot. It appears that the windows XP licence
> > effectively forbins you from using VNC. This may be an issue which
> > directly affects some of you!
> > http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/03/18/020318oplivingston.xml
>
> From the linked article:
>
>   Microsoft's XP license agreement says, "Except as otherwise permitted by
>   the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described
>   below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access,
>   display, or run other executable software residing on the Workstation
>   Computer..."
>
The device is any "other" computer, terminal or workstation etc. (such as 
would run VNC Viewer), according to the licence definitions. It is allowed 
provided it is duly licenced (to M$) but affects not only VNC - what of any 
of the third-party viewers etc? How about accessing it if it is running a web 
server? Secondly, one may not use "the Product" to permit etc. The Product is 
XP. Is VNC Server the Product? Unlikely, I think. Also, it specifies "the 
Product running on the Workstation Computer", so run as a server it would be 
OK.

Typical M$ perhaps but not a serious problem since it is patently erroneous 
in concept. Certainly, any suggestion that non-M$ products could not connect 
lawfully would be contrary to the anti-trust cases already held. It bodes 
well for Open Source and, particularly, LTSP perhaps?

-- 
Best wishes,
Derek