The Register may have quoted the payment terms. But Karsten's quote is about the fact that Borland has unreasonable license terms,No, it's about how Microsoft can get away with it -- formulated so blandly as to seem to be condoning it, from them -- while Borland can't.
And you're trying to imply that *I* read it carelessly?
and Duchane's quote makes it damned clear that the license terms that bug him is the ability to come in and audit you.Yup -- but he's not Karsten. (AFAIK?)
Knowing Karsten a bit, the idea of paying for copyright violations isn't a big deal. The idea of random audits is.Yeah, I did pretty much the opposite of giving him the benefit of the doubt, on what wasn't explicitly quoted in the article... Sorry 'bout that, K. (But on what substance there *was*, I still think I read it more accurately than you, Ben.)
Don't blame the Register's slant on Karsten.And don't try to excuse Karsten's quote with *Duchane's* "slant".
If there are reasonable and an unreasonable options for what to be POed at Borland about, it is best to assume that Karsten is upset about the reasonable one.Huh -- what kind of boring let's-all-agree discussion would *that* give us here?!? ("What's next, you want us all to sing _We Shall Overcome_ in chorus?" ;^)
Now that said, the idea of the audits isn't something to just lightly brush off.No, of course not -- but it still seems silly, going to these hysterics because of the "three-ounce gorilla"'s doing it, when AFAIK all the other more dangerous beasts are doing it too.
The idea of having a company who might be a potential competitor come in and audit what you have on your computer systems is very, very chilling."Competitor"?!? D'you really think that many *development-tool* (compilers, etc) companies use Borland tools? One would think they'd tend to eat their own dog-food...
You are a rabid Borland fan. We all know that.Yup.
Actually, that's why I felt OK with at least partly defending them -- it's not as if I'm trying to *sneak* any pro-corporation viewpoint on y'allses, anyway... Right? :-)
But please come back to rationalityCare to take that back, please?
long enough to see that Borland is trying to hand itself the kind of powers that jack-booted thugs all over drool about.Just like any other commercial proprietary-software company.
And as long as they pursue that course, they deserve to be regarded as jack-booted thugs.As much as any other commercial proprietary-software company, yes.
But hardly more.