That’s a question that has recently been brought to my attention, and at first I wanted to say ‘YES!’ because so many companies use them. However, after reviewing the appropriate US Copyright Law, I have come to the conclusion that EULAs are not legal (maybe the term ‘valid’ would be more applicable). The part that sums up the whole argument for me is the fact that you are in fact the ‘owner of a copy of a computer program.’ That’s right folks, when you go by that new copy of Windows XP Pro (for all $249 non-academic price), you actually own a copy of the software, not just a license to use it, as Microsoft would have you believe.
Now, the thing that got me going on this was the fact that the Mac OS X license agreement states that you are not permitted to run the software on non-Apple branded hardware. I, as a purchaser of a boxed copy of Mac OS X, don’t think they have the right to put that kind of a restriction on me. Especially when copyright law clearly states that I am allowed to copy ‘that computer program . . . as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine.’ Notice those last two words: ‘a machine.’ Notice that it does not say ‘the machine that you bought it with’ or even ‘a machine specified in the accompaning software license agreement.
Now, some will say something to the effect of ‘you bought the software and agreed to the terms of the license before using it.’ However, I find it hard to believe that I could be bound by the terms of an agreement that I have no ability to reject, after exchanging money for a copy of the software. Now, let’s review: Title 17 of the US Code states that after buying a copy of the sofware, I have the right to install that software on a computer (not specifying any particular computer, so, I take that to mean any one computer). The Apple License agreement restricts that right. I seem to remember something in the Law that states that companies cannot take away consumer’s rights (someone feel free to comment with the specific place in the US Code). So, it seems now that Apple (or insert the appropriate company name here) is the one who is actually violating the Law, not me, the consumer who spent his hard-earned student wages to by the software legally.
As of now, I don’t feel like thinking or typing anymore, but I do want to comment more (and maybe more logically) on this topic. So, I’ll be posting back on this issue further. Now, have fun commenting :).
So, I was reading digg the other day, when I saw an article about a Simcity cloan I thought it would be interesting to try, since I played Simcity/2000/3000 back in the day. I tried the link on the top of the post, but it was already dugg. So, I did little searching around, and to my suprise, I found this. For anyone too lazy to click the link, it points to an official version of SimCity 3000 Unlimited for Linux! I was blown away. Years ago, when I played SC3k, I never even heard of this Linux version, but there it is. I couldn’t do anything with it at the time, as I was at school, behind the horrid internet filter. However, when I got home, I spent some time trying to get the playable demo working. It took a while, but I finally got it (it was compiled for a 2.2 kernel, and glibc 2.1 [Redhat 6.x for anyone that cares]). I was suprised that it was working so well, however it only ran well at 800×600; anything higher, and the music would start skipping.
So, all of that was just a prelude to the really unbelievable part: as I was researching, I found an entry for SC3K in the Wine Application Database. This didn’t really suprise me that much, as I’ve seen many other more-processor-intensive games listed in that same database, but it did take me by suprise that the game was getting a gold rating (meaning it runs nearly flawlessly). I had to try it for myself. So, I dug out my copy of SC3K (yes, legal and all that) and installed Wine 0.9.7 from the Ubuntu apt repository. I simply ran wine on the SETUP.EXE on the disk, and let it do it’s thing. After install, I had to fiddle around with the drive configuration in ‘winecfg’ as it didn’t autmatically set up a fake drive to my cdrom drive, and SC3K won’t run without the disc in the drive. After that, I had the game running! It ran nearly perfect (just a little glitch with the splash screen and the mouse cursor, but no big problems).
It blows me away that a game can run better while in Wine than a natively compiled version (granted, it was for Linux 2.2/Glibc 2.1, but still…). It must have been some good programming on the part of Maxis; so I must thank them for their fine work 
Hopefully not my last, but it’s not starting out too well. To start things off, any of the install CDs that I try don’t pick up my plain-jane 3Com 3C905C-TX (while Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Knoppix all pick it up). I mean, I would really love to try the wonderfulness of Gentoo (packages custom-compiled for my system does sound great), but if it can’t even pick up my NIC, I’m going to have to settle for the next-best ‘ordinary’ distro (i.e., Ubuntu ). If anyone wants to make suggestions on getting past this little problem (no, I’m not swaping the NIC out), feel free to comment.
EDIT: I would like to clarify by saying that the NIC is actually picked up (and lsmod says that the kernel modules for it are loaded). ifconfig shows that it recognizes the card, but when I try to use ‘dhcpcd’ (the dhcp client on gentoo), it doesn’t get an IP.