On Tue, 2003-12-23 at 21:29, Ivan Leo Murray-Smith wrote:
They come with apps because the vendors of those apps have a license from M$ to redistribute them. You need such a license before you can redistribute them.
What about people who redistribute those apps in turn?
For instance, if I write a public domain program that uses the MFCs, and include MFC40.DLL and upload it, then somebody else emails it to a friend - are they redistributing without a license? I don't know.
As I don't think you developed the script with a M$ tool that comes with a license that allows you to distribute M$ dlls for whatever platform, this is irrelevant.
I seriously doubt you have to write every piece of your code in a project using MS tools in order to be able to redistribute a DLL. Even if the license did say such a preposterous thing, it could certainly be ignored.
The antitrust case about this is not over, actually Bill testified at it recently, and maybe D.C. and the ten suing states will win. If they do, there may be builds of windows without OE/IE/MSN, but I don't think there will be OE/IE/MSN that can legally run without a windows license.
They can't tie MSN to Windows, regardless of how it's shipped, MSN doesn't have a monopoly.
dll-files is a illegal site, M$ doesn't do anything about it but it stays illegal, so it may be a problem because I think the DMCA says you can't link illegal software (I suppose that's why nobody in the US links to linux dvd players with decks)
No, the DMCA does not say that (as far as I understand), it says you may not distribute (and maybe link to) code that breaks encryption for the purposes of circumventing copy protection. IANAL etc. YMMV :)
thanks -mike