Re: Whose fault is it anyway?

Paolo Cordone wrote: 
There's a very insightful article on the BBC technology section:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4294388.stm

I must agree with everything Bill Thompson says. Why exactly are we allowing developers to get away with so much? It is not that software is cheap or anything. It has become a license to print money, at least for the large software companies :-(

Incorrect. Most of the terms of those licenses are there to make sure that software developers can keep making software, rather than falling into the litigation morass which plagues groups like health care providers. (Who, incidentally, will always pass all the costs right along.)

The author deconstructs the Firefox license, which are the terms provided for a piece of software which comes to us at no dollar cost.

Calling *that* commercial software is incorrect. It isn't. No money has changed hands. If they're in it to make money I can't tell how they're making it, so I don't see how installing Firefox is a license to print it.

Using the license agreement on a piece of free software to decry the problems of such agreements on paid software seems disingenuous to me. One wishes he would have picked apart the Microsoft EULA to have his fun.

Therefore the article is hardly insightful, and is more likely damagingly fallacious and lazy of the commentator, who should have picked a different example. It sabotaged the few good points he actually made.

Rob
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