Software Licensing - Does this Sound Reasonable?

First off, I believe that piracy is a serious problem, and trying to reduce it is good. But not every idea/solution is good.

Licensing of software is a bit of a quagmire. EULAs are 20 pages long on average (rough estimate), so almost no one reads them. But they can be restrictive. Right now I have the install diskettes for Microsoft Access 1.0 in front of me. The packaging reads:

This is ridiculous. Chances are that if you buy a copy of Access/Office nowdays, you'll have at least one old and one current machine you want to install it on, and probably will want to install it for at least a while on your next one as well. I think on the new Office suites the limit is to two computers, but that still is too restrictive. A lot of other software follows a similar model - I almost never read the entire EULA and I'm sure 90% of the rest of the world doesn't either, so I don't know which ones. This goes my the same basic idea. If you bought software, you should be able to install it on howevermany computers you own. You can't install it on the whole neighborhood's PCs, of course, but if you own 5 PCs that'll all run a software, there's no problem with installing it on all 5. That's because you will be the only one using it. That's the crux of how I see the ideal solution to digital rights management. One license covers one family, no matter how many computers they have. You kind of expect it to work that way anyways, and it's unlikely you'd be using the software multiple places at once in any case, so I think it's a reasonable solution. I can see operating systems being a reasonable exception to this, as they are necessary to run any program on the computer.

That's why I don't see a problem with the fact that one copy of Office 2000 is installed on 3 computers at my house (and I'm sure one copies of Office 96 were installed on 3 computers before that). My dad obviously didn't since he installed them all, and his job has a good deal to do with anti-fraud. Neither of us has even illegally downloaded software or files and are vehemently against it. But this is practicality. And how often are multiple installs used at once? Once in a long while for Word, and pretty rarely for the games installed on multiple machines as well.

In the same vein, the iTunes music solution is too restrictive. If I understand it correctly, the DRM on iTunes music allows it only to be used on an iPod. Sorry, but if I buy music I want to be able to play it on my iPod, computer, stereo, and car CD player. And if my old clunker has a cassette drive, it should be fine if I convert it to cassette so I can listen to it there. If you paid for the music, you should be able to listen to it however and wherever you want so long as you do not illegally distribute it. That's why I never plan to buy an iPod or buy from iTunes.

I can see a one-computer restriction for operating systems, as they are absolutely essential for the machine to run. But for software and (legal) music downloads, it seems to me you should be able to use them however you want within your family so long as you do not distribute them further.

 

ok..though I voted for the 3rd option, i really completely agree with what you said above...

 

I consider installing Office on my family's three machines fair use. I mean, one copy of Office 2007 costs more than my brother and sister's yearly tuition fees combined.

And, our state has an agreement with Microsoft, meaning all schoolwork that is submitted electronically be done with MS Office. Being forced to fork out money on handing in assignments when the school itself is free sounds a bit wrong.

If the school were to allow ODF and other open formats for handing in classwork, I'm sure there would be no problem.

 

I believe it is related to the "fair use" clause in copyright law and if you do actively use all three computers, it is no longer fair use(at least hard to prove). That is why in the past, a shared copy of Word/Excel(I don't believe that is possible anymore) located in a file server can be shared amount say 20 people in the office with only 5 license. But there must be some license control system to deny the 6+ active run.

Today, it would depend on how the case is presented in court if being sued. If you have some mechanism to say ensure only one machine is using it at any given time, it is likely that you can prevail in court.

 

It may seem fair to you, but what about the entire spectrum? On one side, you have one computer, one copy. Obviously not problem. On the other side of the spectrum? A 5000 people company. Would it be OK if they bought just one copy and installed it on all their computers? Off course not. That's black and white. Everything in between is all sorts of grey. And Microsoft doesn't appreciate the grey stuff. It's their product, so they can impose whatever they want, nobody is forcing you to buy their stuff if you don't agree..

And don't tell me it's impossible to know this stuff, because I'm pretty sure that most people know at some level that installing one copy of Windows on 2 PCs is somehow not 100% right.

 

If I buy a software, I intend to use it on every computer I have within my possession. End of story. As it is, I don't buy software, and download it for free, and use it however I please.

 

The EULA is the same as those super tiny words on the bottom of a TV commercial. They are meant not to be readable and/or understandable.





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SOFTWARE EULA:
http://download.microsoft.com/docum...lish_36d0fe99-75e4-4875-8153-889cf5105718.pdf

14 pages of blah blah blah blah!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Ya... and actually you can get away with small tiny P/Ses on Ebay. But please don't do that, if you do, ur really a jack.

 

I did specifically except operating systems in the opening post.

As to the corporation, I didn't even think of that when I wrote the original post. Of course there is a problem using one copy for 5000 people - but there is mass licensing for that. I haven't checked the prices recently for that, but I'm sure the per-unit cost is much lower than the cost for the consumer.

That's the crux of my position, arguing it from a family perspective. If both you and your wife have laptops and there also is a family desktop, you expect to be able to run whichever software you buy on all three of those machines. Hence why current licensing is sometimes too restrictive.

And Lysander's position indicates why this is particularly a problem with Microsoft Office. I don't think it would go over very well in public opinion if the courts ruled anyone with Office installed on more than one computer had to pay $300 per additional computer it was installed on and started viciously enforcing it. That's a good deal of money for the middle class, and far more than the lower class can afford.

I certainly am not going to buy another copy of every game I have when my new laptop comes so I can play it on my current desktop when I want to play multiplayer and play it with higher settings on single player on my laptop.

It's a matter of convenience - you shouldn't have to either spend $2000 to get another copy of all your software or uninstall and reinstall every time you want to use it on a different machine.

Most families these days are no more than five people; the average is four and very few are more than seven. While a small company might well have all their 15 workers using the same software at once, it's unlikely in a family. It's a more fair solution to have family incensing. And a lot of companies seem to agree with this in practice - as far as I know Microsoft is the only company trying to restrict small-scale licensing of their software.

Just checked my favorite game's licensing, and fortunately there's no restriction there. Whew!

And if you hadn't already guessed, this response was mostly in response to Ice-Tea's response. There are certainly valid points there, but I'm sticking with my argument.

 

In a word, no.

Current system while flawed in many ways is sort of right, I guess the real question comes (for me) down to more of if I personally own 3 computers, obviously I'm not using all three at once, therefore can I install the software on all three given that I'll only be using it on any one computer at any given time.

Now, when you start bringing multiple people into the equation "family" as you put it, then you start to need as many copies or licenses as are going to be used at any time.

Actually you absolutely SHOULD have to buy another copy for every PC you want to use it on at the same time (I do prefer the "at the same time" caveat) because you are using it on more than one PC, it really is no different than going round to your neighbours house and installing it on every PC they own. As for a school only accepting Microsoft Office documents, well go download Open Office and use that instead, it's free and produces Microsoft Office formatted documents.

 

I personally use OpenOffice, because my univeristy accepts submissions in .pdf format, and MS Office (as of 2003) did not export to PDF. The problem is for my siblings. While OpenOffice is awesome, transferring .docs from one program to the other can result in really odd corruptions. It's even worse for powerpoint presentations. I would gladly have them use OpenOffice, as I support open standards.

But, whilst we may be forced to use MS Office for the sake of their school work, we will sure as hell not be forced to pay for it.

 

Office '07 still has no PDF support.

 

I just picked up a copy of Foxit PDF Creator to take care of that problem. It works with XP and Vista, and installs a virtual printer to the system that outputs a PDF. It is relatively cheap...

 

Look, this is reasonable. They must have put years into designing the programs so think of all those people who need to get payed! If they don't get payed they won't develop any further programs and as a result we'd be thrown back into the stone age. If you'd spent five years on a program 24-7 (yes software developers ARE like that) would you want to come out with negative £60,000 + at the end of it from living expenses.

Paying for and liscencing software is REALLY, REALLY important.

 

We'd be thrown back into the stone age without runaway EULAs, market monopolies, and overpriced software?

Someone's never heard of open source.

 

For fairness, without Wintel which drives the explosive growth of PC, we may not be seeing open source developed to what we are having now.

 

Actually, to be fully honest, I don't understand the DRM thing for ITunes. I use beatport.com or trackitdown.net normally so I'm not familiar with the whole Itunes store system, but isn't the ITunes DRM USELESS? Anyone can go and get a wave or mp3 editor and create a de-DRM-ed file, couldn't they? And if they wanted to do this to their entire collection, they could just use a macro to do it over and over again. I think there should be a way to protect the salaries of artists like myself, but I find that the current DRM system is an unacceptable, cheap excuse for this purpose that only serves as an annoyance to music fans.

 

I'll have to find the article, but I think open-source is a 'for programmers, by programmers' kind of concept. Useful, yes...but someone is getting paid to figure out the programs and the operating systems, so that gives them an 'incentive' to work and make things better.

 

People do get paid to code for MS, Apple, etc - that's true. But the majority of profits still go to the people at the top of the company. If Microsoft sells a billion copies of Vista - or more likely, forcibly bundles them with 1 billion computers - the profits aren't ever going to trickle down to 99% of the people who work for Microsoft. It stays with the CEOs and the board members - at Microsoft, at Dell, at Apple, everywhere. If the people who actually did the heavy lifting were commensurately rewarded in accordance with profit margins, most MS employees would take home six-figure paychecks, and would have been doing so for years now. That's never going to happen until inflation raises the cost of milk to $10/gallon. Across the board, the profits go into very few pockets, yet the super stockholders are the first to remind us about "rewarding the developers for their work".

I think it's better in smaller companies, as each person counts for more, proportionally speaking. For example, you might still just be a number working at Microsoft, Apple, or Google, but you'll be a far more significant digit at Apple than MS, and a still more significant digit at Google than at Apple. Or at least, I imagine it to be the case.

 

Open source does not mean you can't get paid for your work. The are plenty of people who make a living off it.