We can't deny some of us here at Download Squad love open source software. But there's not a damn fool here that will disagree with the statement: "Bill Gates is an extremely intelligent man." We won't disagree that he's done amazing things for technology as a whole. And yes, we even wish heartily we had the faith in ourselves to say if we had that much moolah, we'd be even half as charitable with it.

But right now we're all kind of standing around scratching our heads and saying, "Wha?"

Today Techdirt points out a nice little quote by the venerable Mr. Gates in a Wired article. It seems as though Gates says that open source created a licensing situation "so that nobody can ever improve the software." All right, now, that would be a self-defeating license, wouldn't it? What have the brain-sucking aliens done with the Bill Gates we all know and love whose intellect we respect greatly?

Of course, we're willing to throw poor Bill a bone. The Wired quote is not a complete quote. It very well could be out of context. They then quote him saying that pharmaceutical companies who invent drugs should be able to charge for them. Well, yeah. Duh. And people who develop open source applications can also charge for them.

Open source doesn't necessarily mean it's free as in beer. Conversely, just because the local brewery is giving away free lager, it doesn't mean you'll get anywhere asking for the recipe.

We're wondering if Wired slipped up, or if Bill Gates is truly puzzled about the distinctions between free software and open software? Has he read the GPL? There are quick versions on their site... so even those of us who aren't as smart as Gates can get the general idea.

[via Techdirt and Wired]

When Adobe launched Photoshop Express last week, we were so excited to try out the powerful online image editing application that we didn't read the fine print very closely. But one of our readers was kind enough to point out the fact that Adobe reserved the right to do some interesting things with your photos.

Specifically, Adobe's terms of use stated that the company could "use, distribute, derive revenue or other renumeration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate" and use your images "in any format or medium now or later developed." Now, while it makes sense that users need to grant Adobe some non-exclusive rights to their images so Adobe doesn't get accused of any wrongdoing by publishing your images on the web, the whole making money off of your images even after you remove them from your account thing seemed like a bit much and led to a few complaints.

Now Adobe has revised its terms of use. And while the company still has the right to display and distribute your content, the new terms clearly state that Adobe does not have the right to sell your content or to use it at all once you remove it from your account. And if you want to prevent Adobe from displaying your image publicly in the first place, all you have to do is refrain from clicking the share option.

[via Gizmodo]

Lizenzen is a free app for Mac OS 10.4+ that lets you easily organize your software license keys. The program has a sidebar showing the titles of all of the apps you add and a main screen showing detailed information like license key, software version, support contact information, date purchased, and the computer to which the license is assigned. You can also export a simple PDF of all of your software licenses (although the PDF has no column headings for some reason).

The Lizenzen .zip also comes with two other programs: a portable version of the software for taking your licenses with you on a USB drive, and grabbICON. grabbICON is included so that you can extract an app's icon to use for your software license entry in Lizenzen.

A word of caution: your license data is stored in an unencrypted text file.

[Via MacUpdate]

YouTube has worked out a deal with a UK licensing company that will see its uploaders being able to use the music of over 50,000 composers legally on their uploaded videos.

The licensing company represents and brings in the royalties on behalf of over 50,000 composers, songwriters and publishers, with over 10 million combined pieces of music. Google owned YouTube has supposedly paid out a flat fee in exchange for the usage of the library of music. No terms of the deal, as well as dollar figures have been released.

This is a big move in Google's efforts to ward off copyright hungry record labels.

[via Reuters]

Google has been working hard the past few years to gain the respect of the Chinese government. It looks like that hard work has started to pay off with a recent license they have partially obtained to serve content to the second largest internet market in the world.

What does this mean exactly? It means that first steps have been made in a preliminary approval to potentially supply news to China.

There are still certain procedures which Google has to follow in order to get a full license and final approval; nonetheless Google is slowly on the move to being seen as a viable resource for the Chinese market. There has been no word as of yet as to the steps that Google must make in order to obtain a full license to serve the news content.

Across two posts, Charles Miller describes an unfortunate experience with re-registering NewsFire, a popular Mac RSS client. NewsFire's developer, Dave Watanabe, implemented a registration system that simply asks for the email address used to register the software, which the app then checks against a central server Watanabe maintains.

The problem arose when Miller tried to re-activate NewsFire after switching Macs and wiping Mac OS X a couple of times (he goofs around with OS seeds and a lot of software). After one too many activations, NewsFire eventually told him that his email was no longer valid, in which case Miller emailed Watanabe to see what was going on. Check out Watanabe's response:

While you may now activate your software again, the evidence suggests that you've activated your single-user license from a suspiciously wide variety of locations. An explanation would be appreciated. I don't want to have to presume this is breach of license.

This 'interesting' response prompted Miller to explore the many and unfortunately ugly faces of product activation (as well as the fine line between customer service and disservice), and plenty of questions have resurfaced in the ongoing discussion of software and licensing. Is replacing a registration name and key with nothing but an email address a good idea? How about tying a key to specific hardware? Can we trust users with activation systems that *don't* phone home? Should these complications force product activation in the nether-regions of our hard drives, or is there a better idea on the horizon?

MySQL's VP of community relations Kaj Arno's he explains in his blog that MySQL has changed its license from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2 only", so MySQL doesn't have to be forced to use the GPLv3, which as you know is not so widely adopted yet. MySQL may very well move to the new v3 license once it becomes more commonplace, but for now, they don't want to put users and developers in a tight spot with a new license, so they are opting to use the older version exclusively for now. Seems like a good move to stay put but help with the future license progress as well.

[Via Slashdot]

So you're a software developer and want your program to have a shiny "ribbon" interface just like Office 2007? Well, guess what--Microsoft patented the hell out of it! This should not surprise anybody. However, there is good news for developers, or some of them, at least. Microsoft has announced that it has "created a royalty-free licensing program that will enable developers to build applications that have the look and feel of the new 2007 Office system applications." The license is perpetual, meaning once Microsoft grants you the license it can't turn around and revoke or change it later on. However there are, as you might imagine, some "guidelines" Microsoft wants you to follow when building your own ribbony apps, and they take the form of a 120-page document. Though the deal sounds largely positive for software developers, there is one significant catch: Microsoft won't license their ribbon UI patents for products that compete directly with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access. This is a sensible move for Microsoft, but a bummer for the makers of competing products who stand a lot to gain from making products that look and act just like the dominant office suite in the marketplace.

You can check out the press release and a canned interview about the new licensing program at the link above, but I heartily recommend you skip it and instead head over to Jensen Harris' blog. Harris is Microsoft's Group Program Manager for the Office UI and lays everything out in plain English. He also links to a preview of the guidelines (you have to sign an NDA to get at the full 120-page document) and a Channel 9 video in which he talks to Microsoft laywer Judy Jennison about the program.

Suprises Inside Microsoft Vista's EULA! Oh, sorry, that was supposed to be a sad frowny face, not an exclamation point. These are not surprises like the ones you find at the bottom of your Froot Loops. They're like the ones you find in, well, Microsoft licenses. The SecurityFocus article by Scott Granneman says that while Microsoft has tried to spit-polish Vista's license terms in recent weeks, they're still pretty draconian. Here are some of the delightful nuggets you can find: Benchmark gag order: You can only perform benchmarks on Vista, but only when you comply with Microsoft's conditions, which can change at any time. Virtualization limits: You can't run Vista Home Basic or Home Premium in a virtual machine, and if you use Vista Business or Ultimate in a virtual machine, you're not allowed to access any Microsoft DRM-protected content, including music and documents. Transfer to to other systems: You can transfer your Vista license to a second machine (provided you take it off the first machine), but after that you're done. No second transfer. Game over.

Okay, so not all of this is news. We've talked about some of this before. But all of it sucks. As I've said before, your average user isn't going to read the EULA, much less care overmuch about its clauses on virtualization and benchmarking. But people who make purchasing decisions and give advice--those users' techie friends, IT managers, and so forth--aren't blind to these things. Is Microsoft slowly killing itself by making its EULAs increasingly consumer-surly? Will the power-users eventually bail, and take their layman friends and family with them?

Update: It seems like maybe both I and Granneman are behind the times. Several users have pointed out that Microsoft has backtracked on the limitations on transferring a Vista license to a new machine after outcry from pretty much everybody.

Ah, EULAs. Can live with them, can't be bothered to read them. TechWeb has an illuminating overview of what's new in Windows Vista's end-user license agreement, i.e. that thing you never read before clicking "I Agree." Of course, there's plenty of new stuff that you can't do. To begin with, Microsoft forbids you from transferring the OS to another machine more than once. Whereas you could transfer your copy of XP to a new computer as often as you wanted (as long as you took it off the old one), Vista says no, after the second one you've got to buy a new license. Ergo, if you've built your own machine and plan on upgrading your motherboard regularly, prepare to shell out for a new copy of Vista the second time you do. Secondly, Microsoft has forbidden installing Vista Home or Vista Home Premium on a virtual machine like VMware or Parallels. If you want to do that you'll have to pay for Windows Vista Business or Ultimate, which will retail for $299 and $399, respectively, though I rather doubt Microsoft has any way to actually enforce this. Lastly, Vista's license spells out its right to "phone home" to Microsoft and require validation whenever it feels like it, and the ramifications if validation fails for any reason: "The software will from time to time validate the software, update or require download of the validation feature of the software. If after a validation check, the software is found not to be properly licensed, the functionality of the software may be affected."

To be honest, these ugly restrictions won't have much affect on the average home user, but could they be any more geek-unfriendly? Surly restrictions like this piss off power-users, who are the people those average Joes turn to when they want to know what kind of computer to buy. Microsoft is sure to make a pretty penny on Vista, but at what cost?

Update: This article at MacInTouch points out another wrinkle: If you use Vista Business or Ultimate inside a virtual machine, you are forbidden from accessing DRM-protected media: "You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system. If you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services or use BitLocker." [Via Boing Boing]

Update 2: ZDNet's Ed Bott sheds some doubt on the Home virtualization issue, saying that TechWeb and others misinterpreted the license. He says, in short, that virtualization is perfectly fine for Vista Home, but you must have a license for each virtual machine just as with XP. However, if you shell out for Vista Ultimate or Business, "you can load another copy of that same OS, using the same product key, in a virtual machine on that same computer." Which would be a huge perk for power-users willing to put up the extra cash. Hopefully someone from Microsoft will chime in sooner or later with a difinitive clarification.