Karsten:

The point is that you can't fight the market. Borland is trying to muscle in some aggregious licensing terms. It's only (IMVAO) going to lose marketshare in the process.

Yes, probably. It's not as if I'm saying it isn't a *stupid* move, you know...

...OK, so (and I'm guessing here) but...we are agreed that this is idiotic on Borland's part then?

Yeah, sure. Haven't I said so two or three times already?

(BTW, it's "egregious"; sorry I forgot to mention that before.)


What we aren't agreeing on -- what you seem to be forgetting, or ignoring -- is that this is Borland you're dealing with here. Borland, of the No-Nonsense License (TM?), the "treat it like you would a book" guys. They have a history[*] of dealing reasonably fair with developers (their customers), and of rectifying it when they are about to fuck up. That, at least in my book, is one more reason why they don't deserve (as m)any cheap shots (as most other software companies), or wild "destry ALL copies of Borland software!" (apparently including Kahn's original-NoNonsense-licensed Turbo Pascal) over-reactions.

But, hey, just out of curiosity, how would *you* try to fight "piracy" in Borland's particular situation?

Real simple. Maybe simplistic.

I wouldn't.

Yeah, maybe... OTOH, maybe it is -- simplistic, that is.

But that's a subject for another discussion, looking at their situation per se without any preconcieved assumptions and histrionics. Let's shelve that one for a while, OK?

The simple truth is this: Borland doesn't need to worry about piracy, they need to worry about mindshare. Staying afloat and relevant. Getting people to use the prodct. Keeping the product alive.

Hey, it's not exactly as if nobody is using their product(S!) now.

Writing brain-dead licensing terms that a corporate risk manager is going to look at and say "no way, Jose", isn't going to cut it.

Huh?!? Why would a "corporate risk manager" suddenly react that way to *their* licensing terms, when he's taken 'em in his stride from everybody else (including a lot of other outfits much smaller than Microsoft) so far?

This is the song that Ed Foster at InfoWorld's been singing regardign UCITA and various EULA clauses for years.

And he's still railing against it, isn't he? He has to -- because those "corporate risk manager"s *aren't* saying "no way, Jose".

I'm definitely taking my free software biases to this, but you certainly don't have to be a free software freak to reach similar conclusions.

And I wouldn't think you *have* to be a "rabid Borland fan" to think this current spastic reaction against Borland, specifically, is a bit out of proportion.

You've snipped a fair bit of my post as irrelevant, I believe you're mistaken in doing so.

Sigh... I snipped (and commented on) that bit for two reasons: A) partly in jest; and B) partly because I thought it was obvious enough already.

Borland needs to grow, regardless of the cost.

What *is* this obsession with size... A misunderstanding of some thesis from economics, or just some general American thing?

I'll say it again, from the MSFT v. DoJ trial: launching new product today requires distributing at least a million free copies to gain mindshare.

Well, lucky for them they aren't launching any *new* product, then... (Kylix is just a port of an already existing product from Windows to Linux.) Last time they did, was when they introduced JBuilder, AFAICT.

Where'd it say that in the trial, BTW? (Honest question -- sounds interesting, but I must have missed it.)

Borland's going to have to divorce revenues from copies in distribution by one means or another, or they're going to have the action taken for them.

What, so now it's a given that the proprietary-software license-sales model is dead already? That's news to me. Do RMS and ESR know they've won? :-)

If not, then maybe it doesn't behoove *you* to lecture down to *me* quite as much as you're prone to doing, now does it? (And no cheating, now -- if you need outside help to figure out what the mumbo-jumbo is really all about, I expect you to tell us so.)

I'm not the one lecturing down, Sir Cyclic.

Oh, so you're saying that's *only* Ben?

More seriously: Then what do you call blithely claiming that "the link works" when, as demonstrated above -- you're welcome, BTW... -- it fucking well didn't?

Take a powder

And what, exactly, is that then?

tell us all what you're getting at, 'coz this dense Murkin ain't gettin' it.

The problem is, the compiler in Kylix Open Edition is the exact same one as in the Developer and Server (and, wouldn't you know it, "Enterprise") Editions.

So when the Borland Auditors show up on your doorstep, you slam the door in their faces and cry, triumphantly, "Don't come back until you have a search warrant!"... Then they go to a judge, and say they'd like one. As proof for their suspicion, they show the compiled binary you're distributing. (Let's assume there are some telltale marks in the binary that lets one identify it as compiled under Kylix.)

Then you show up, and tell the judge that *of course* your software is developed and compiled under Kylix -- you have the Open Edition; it's free for the download, and that's what you did, you say.

Case summarily dismissed.

So how are they going to get you to pay for the illicit copy of the Server Edition that you are *actually* using[+], when the only difference is the class libraries; how can they prove that that is what you're doing?

That is their dilemma, and AFAICS that is what this stupid audit clause is their attempt at solving.

---

[*]: A history that's looking a *little* bit shaky, from a few incidents during the last couple of years (the half-aborted Open-Source-ing of InterBase foremost among them). But still, on balance I have to say they definitely deserve the benefit of the doubt.

[+]: The same goes for the case when someone just renames all the relevant components by inheriting from them ("TMyMiddleWareThingy = class(TMiddleWareThingy);", "TMyRemoteDataServer = class(TRemoteDataServer);", etc) and then distributes the resulting binary components under some FreebieWarez license. Then others can actually use the legal Open Edition compiler and IDE -- in conjunction with these ripped-off class libraries, it effectively becomes a "pirated" copy of the more expensive version.