I was wrestling with a Eudora mail migration / WinNT horkage issue at the time, Andrew was peaked from a day at JavaOne.

The key bit I was trying to get in there -- these "academic only" or "noncommercial use only" licenses basically keep you from being able to do anything useful. You can see the code. You can modify it. You can tweak it. But you can't use what you do with it. This, when there's a tremendous body of Java, Linux, GNU, and other truly free software code out there. This is a "frivolous uses only" license, it's yet another fivolous attempt by MSFT to get on the free software groove, without actually getting there.

The license itself isn't terribly different in spirit from one which came out 1998 or 1999 that I was asking the IWETHEY Group Mind (I keep calling it the IWETHEY Collective Memory) about. I remember it being a near rip of the GPL and BSD in large part, with some whacked patent clauses attached to it.

That said, if there are decent ideas in the code, this action makes lifting them quite easy. Unless that's part of the grand scheme, and there's a patent entrapment down the road.