Software Licences

Joshua Graham Pitcher ((no email))
Mon, 29 Jul 1996 09:30:44 +1000 (EST)

G'Day!

Alister's post about M$ licencing got me thinking about the legality of the
licences that ship with Microsoft (and other software companies) products.

I have read that no company can control how a product is sold or disposed of
by the buyer. For example, OEM software that say "for distribution only with
a new PC" or words to that effect may be sold by the seller to whomever they
please with or without a new PC without any fear of prosecution. This is
because that once the company has sold the product to the reseller, they
cannot (legally) regulate how the product is resold. Of course whether or
not they continue to supply this seller is their own business, but once the
goods are supplied to the seller, he may dispose of them any way he wishes.

Along the same line as this is clauses in licences saying that in the event
that you sell your software to someone else, you must pass on or destroy all
copies of the software that you made. Is this legal or enforceable? My
guess is that it isn't. If you started using that copy, that would be a
different matter i suppose.

Are there any other general clauses in software licence agreements that are
invalid?

I'm in the process of buying a house, and after reading all the contracts and
agreements associated with buying a house and taking out a mortgage, I'm
starting to get the shits with the bullshit that appears in these contracts.
And what really annoys me is that they add a clause to the contract saying
something like "if any of the clauses in this contract are unenforcable by law,
that that invalid clause does not affect the validity of the rest of the
contract". I read this as "We will put whatever we like in this contract and
it is your repsonsibility to find out whether it is legal or not. If you
catch us out, then we won't use the clause that you caught us on, but we'll
still use all the others that you haven't".

Grrrr...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joshua Pitcher jpitcher@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au
P.O. Box 253 http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~jpitcher
Pymble 2053
AUSTRALIA

University, n.:
Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
fix it, and ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------