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MS legal threat derails Foxpro on Linux demo | |
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| Time: 20:56 EST/01:56 GMT | News Source: The Register | Posted By: Bill Roach | ||
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Microsoft has enraged the developer community after a Redmond executive last week threatened a software developer to prevent him from demonstrating a Microsoft application running on Linux. Whil Hentzen, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was to have presented a seminar showing how to run Microsoft's Visual FoxPro on Linux at the Bay Area Association of Database Developers last Wednesday. | ||
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| #1 By 14158 (65.32.172.25) at 4/17/2003 10:28:15 PM |
| This sounds bogus to me... |
| #2 By 6253 (12.237.219.240) at 4/18/2003 4:36:58 AM |
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Hentzen was going to demonstrate a technique originally documented by Paul McNett for running VFP 7.0 (compiled apps and IDE) on Linux using Wine.
In the case of compiled apps, four VFP runtime files (vfp7r.dll, vfp7t.dll, vfp7renu.dll, and vfp7run.dll) plus one Visual C++ runtime file (msvcr70.dll) were being used on a non-Windows platform. You can download the latest Microsoft Product Use Rights from http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/downloads/pur.pdf (this is basically a consolidation of all EULAs, updated quarterly). In the April 2003 version of the PUR, see page 48. Today's developers are spoiled; in the old days (and still today, in the case of certain COBOL products), you had to pay a free for each runtime you distributed. Microsoft allows royalty-free runtime redistribution, but you are restricted to the Windows platform. For Hentzen to publicly demonstrate the use of those runtimes on non-Windows was a license violation. In the case of the IDE, it has problems running on Wine's emulation of oleaut32.dll, so the suggested technique is to copy a real oleaut32.dll from genuine Microsoft Windows and set the Wine configuration option to use it instead. Some people believe that if they own a license for a copy of Windows, they can take the oleaut32.dll from it and do anything with it. Under U.S. Copyright Law (and in the 96 nations which are signatories of the Berne Convention), allowing any portion of Windows to be used as part of something else would be considered a "derivative work." Anyone is allowed to create a derivative work of copyrighted material, as long as it is for private use, but once you decide to go public with it, the copyright owner must grant permission. If Microsoft knowingly allows a derivative work to be shown in public, it erodes Microsoft's copyright on Windows. This is the same as Eminem taking Dido's song and adding his rap. He can do it in private without permission, but he can't start performing it in public without Dido's permission. There are limited exceptions for things like parody, but Wine is clearly not using oleaut32.dll as a political statement. It is a misleading oversimplification to say that Microsoft is against VFP on other operating systems. In fact, Microsoft once sold FoxPro 2.6 for SCO Unix (see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/support/vfoxpro/content/faq/fpunix/all.asp) and Microsoft still allows you to access VFP from Linux/Mac via Virtual PC, VMware, and Terminal Services (all of which require Windows to be the actual platform for VFP and thus comply with the license). |
| #3 By 8589 (67.65.85.16) at 4/18/2003 1:55:21 PM |
| Great reply Holedup. |
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