Comments on: Friday Grab Bag

By: Luis

Luis — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:44:01 +0000

Please nag me about it. I have some ideas, but not much time, so nagging will get you everywhere

By: Seth Gottlieb

Seth Gottlieb — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:53:40 +0000

Regarding your need for a new bag. My Spire bag from 1998 is still going strong. Spire USA is a local (local for me: Western Massachusetts) company that makes great products: http://www.spireusa.com.

By: sogrady

sogrady — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 01:21:30 +0000

@Mike: have only tinkered with it thus far, but it’s fine. not bad at all.

By: sogrady

sogrady — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 01:21:01 +0000

@Luis: that’s exactly the kind of response i was looking for. i was actually thinking of asking you to do a Q&A on EULA’s, but if you’ve got a post in the works i’ll just shut up and wait for it

By: Mike Dolan

Mike Dolan — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:18:41 +0000

How is the SSH client?

By: Luis

Luis — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:26:10 +0000

(And please nag me to write more about this next week.)

By: Luis

Luis — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:25:11 +0000

I don’t know that anyone thinks EULAs are ‘required’, but there is no other way to indicate in anything even vaguely approaching a legally binding way that ‘we’re giving you this software, here are the conditions we’re giving it to you under.’

So the question is probably less ‘are EULAs necessary’ and more ‘are conditions necessary.’

Generally, I think the answer is no; once you’re in legal possession of a copyrighted work you have the right to use it. (There are people who want to change this.)

Unfortunately, if you want to disclaim warranties (which in many US states you do), the answer may well be ‘yes’. So you’re sort of stuck. (Admittedly, most EULAs are about waaaaay more than that, and they shouldn’t be, but at least that is a pretty plausible justification under US law.)

Note also that in both the Chrome and Firefox cases these were more than ‘just’ software EULAs- they also doubled as Terms of Service for the (non-copyrightable?) services that sit behind the copyrighted software. That complicates things a lot, and frankly I’m not sure anyone has thought through all the implications. I sure haven’t.