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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mira.net.au!news.vbc.net!samba.rahul.net!rahul.net!a2i!olivea!news.sgi.com!csulb.edu!news.uoregon.edu!symiserver2.symantec.com!usenet From: tedm@agora.rdrop.com Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD VS BSDI, INC. Date: 15 Sep 1996 06:44:35 GMT Organization: Symantec Corporation Lines: 28 Message-ID: <51g8kk$knj@symiserver2.symantec.com> References: <51963f$2dr4@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net> <323A3293.5C66@wsg.net> <51drrm$5s0@typo.org> <51epqb$84b@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <DxqpE8.Gnp@kithrup.com> Reply-To: tedm@agora.rdrop.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.6.34.1 X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2.5 In <DxqpE8.Gnp@kithrup.com>, sef@kithrup.com (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: [some deleted] > >Previously, I'd've said that this didn't matter, but a Federal Circuit Court >has recently (June 20, 1996) upheld shrinkwrap licenses as valid contracts, >which means that all the terms in it are enforceable. So that means that, >buy renting a BSDi license (since the license only grants you the ability to >use it at their whim, is non-transferable, etc.), you agree to all of the >terms of the license. > Typically if you have a system that is important enough to sue over (ie, you are continuously backing it up, but even so 6 hours of downtime is worth tons of dollars) you get the software vendor/vendors to all sign contracts agreeing that each other's stuff all works with each other. These will of course supersede any shrink-wrap contracts that are present on the software boxes. Another way of looking at it is that you are buying extended service contracts that have _very_ stiff penalties. I don't know if BSDI engages in that, but I'm sure that if I had a network of enough servers that I wanted to standardize on BSDI, and I was willing to pay them enough, that I could get them to agree to something like that. Of course, BSDI is a small company and doesen't have the resources like an IBM does, so if problems developed and I had to haul them into court over contract violations I know I wouldn't get anything out of them worth hauling them into court in the first place.