My own personal feeling is to hell with what M$ thinks they can get away with. Without getting into specifics, if that truly is an enforceable offense, it makes no sense that they include a boot manager that is so easily edited. I use M$ for a few tasks, applications, and, until my company provides a multi-platform VPN client, VPN. However,80-90% of the time I'm in Linux learning to do some of these things without having to boot into M$. Despite the goofy wording they think is enforceable, as end user, if I have to pay for a license, I'll use the software/OS in a way that's within my government's laws. Last I checked, the US doesn't have a law abolishing dual- or even tri-boot systems (I've got SuSE 8.0 and a Red Hat 7.3 test-bed on hdb). Come to think of it, I can't think of anywhere that has that in their laws. Cheers!! barry -----Original Message----- From: Curtis Rey [mailto:crrey@charter.net] Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 8:22 PM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] OT: Is it illegal to dual boot? Even if the M$ EULA tried (and I repeat "tried") to stipulate that a person could not have a dual boot system their is no (repeat "no") way for M$ to have any legal footing in this area or to be able to enforce such a stupulation. Granted that a person can give up one's rights (to a degree) by contractual consent, it is not in the domain of M$ to enforce what product a user my or may not use on a giving piece of hardware. There are no Federal, State, or Local statutes that are on the books that would even remotely afford this control of a users' adoption of a software product and it's use on any given piece of hardware. Although, M$ has tried indeed to do this, as evidenced by their tactics with the nations public schools and donations of used computers. Wherein, they attempted to affirm that Windows installed by an OEM (e.g. Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc..) was tied to that manufacturers hardware (namely the HDD) and the "unbundling" of said products was indeed a violation ot the EULA. Many schools were frieghtened by this strong arm tactic ( this is recent - about 4 to 6 months ago) and consulted their legal departments with mixed results. The end result was a lot of bad press for M$, in light of both their less than desired acceptance of their "software assurance" initiative and the present anti-trust case dealing with (you guessed it) bundle M$ products together to enforce their monopoly. Since this has come to light and M$ has managed to smear more "egg" on their own faces and further alienate their consumer base, their has been no further reports of this sort of tactic. M$ has removed pages from one of their websites that was cleverly word to give the impression that using hardware donated to institutions that once had an M$ product on them would require a license and that signing onto the "software assurance" product would be more beneficial to the institution. Due to this sort of sleazy tactic and the fact the many local school systems are unable to afford the new M$ licensing schema, many schools are seriously considering using OSS products in the schools. In turn M$ proposed the donation of "X" million of dollars worth of computers to the schools as part of a settlement for a case running parallel to the anti-trust case. This was rejected when further scrutiny showed that M$ had an ulterior motive. That being to supplanted Open Source adoption while displacing MAC's as the once predominant computer system and software at educational institutions. Stay tuned for More exciting developments in the never ending saga of "how M$ tries to expand revenues in a saturated desktop market". Sure to amuse all. Cheers, Curtis On Wednesday 17 July 2002 11:41, Fast Info wrote:
Actually I never read my EULA (Windows ME). I read it on some website.
Any way, I will get rid of Windows if MS asks me to. The only reason I
use Windows is MSN messenger. Everyone in my family uses MSN messenger. I tried installing everybuddy but it crashed frequently so I kept Messenger. Leo
Chris Goddard wrote:
Microsoft has changed the EULA (End User License Agreement) from OS to OS, so it is possible that was a provision of your EULA. However, off the top of my head, I can't think of any way that they would be able to figure out that you were, in fact, running a dual boot. If, however, they did ask you to remove Linux, then you could just go ahead and remove Windows since it sucks anyway :). If you let me know
what version of Windows you're running, then we might be able to figure out what flavor EULA you agreed to.
HTH,
--chris.
-----Original Message-----
From: Fast Info [mailto:fastmail@subdimension.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 1:11 PM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: [SLE] OT: Is it illegal to dual boot?
I read somewhere on the web that by clicking on Accept when you start
using a computer with MS system (apparently its called EULA), you agree to the fact that MS can ask you to remove any software from your system?
This includes any other OS that you install after you receive your system. I am not sure about this but does that authorize MS to tell us to remove Linux from our dual-bootable system?
TIA Leo
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