Current Status With win32asm

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Contrary to popular opinion in some places I have always struggled to be fair in dealing with people and if someone is straight and honest with me, I do my best to return the courtesy. SpooK has contacted me and after we discussed a number of matters, SpooK has removed a number of things from the win32asm forum and by having demonstrated this level of goodwill, I am willing to reciprocate by removing a number of postings that I have placed in the Soap Box.

Now i would not want anyone to think that I had lost that special skill of being a cantankerous old bastard, it just happens to come with the turf and in a forum of this type where absolutely no-one is ever going to be sh*t on by anyone else, someone gets the job of doing the occasional dirty work and that happens to be me. While our admin team are by no means wilting daisies when it comes to kicking ass and will straighten up any nonsense, it is in fact a lot more efficient that their many skills are not wasted emptying the trash.

This stuff is not always fun but the upside to the way the team run this forum is that many talented people are able to float around here without being subject to script kiddie pecking orders and being attacked because someone disagrees with how they write their code or part their hair or whatever else.

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Until a particular posting in the win32asm forum is removed, I have no choice than responding to misinformation that it contains to the content of the Microsoft EULA enclosed with the project.

1. Attempts to undermine the MASM32 Project.
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The original version of trying to undermine the project by attacking the Microsoft EULA was done by Betov in an earlier version of the win32asm forum until Iczelion banned him. His campaign shifted to the Usenet venue alt.lang.asm (ALA) where the campaign floundered on the contents of the EULA enclosed within the project.

An associate of Betov then attempted to verify Betov's views on the Microsoft EULA by contacting Microsoft in Germany but as of about 2 and a half years ago has has still not received an answer and last I heard he was trying to report Microsoft to some Anti Piracy agency for allowing ML.EXE to be downloaded under the EULA from the WIN98DDK from their own web site and from having made arrangements from time to time that allowed their EULA and binaries to be distributed in other ways.

The next attempt to undermine the MASM32 project was launched in ALA by Sune Marcher (commonly known by his nick name f0dder) somewhere around the middle of 2004 and this varied from Betov's approach in that it attempted to impose a condition that the Microsoft Corporation was in some sense bound to notify him or anyone else that he nominated as to negotiation that the may or not make with persons or parties in relation to software that is owned by the Microsoft Corporation.

It appears by the content of the current attempt to undermine the MASM32 project that Sune Marcher has exercised sufficient influence over Keith Kanios to raise this argument again in a notice posted in the old win32asm forum. It is the last form posted at the old win32asm forum that I will address.

2. The Microsoft EULA for the WIN98DDK.
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An end user licence agreement is a legal relationship between two (2) parties, in this instance, the Microsoft Corporation as the owner of the software and the end user who will use the software if they are willing to fully comply with the EULA. The EULA grants the end user a specific set of legal rights of use under the conditions specified in the EULA.

The mistake made by a number of the people mentioned above is that they have attempted to alter what the EULA for the WIN98DDK is to
something other than an end user licence agreement. The EULA in fact does not address the idea of direct distribution at all and it does not impose any restriction whatsoever on the licencee on how or why they conduct negotiations with any person or party for any reason including the use and distribution of their software.

The attempt to append additional conditions and content to the EULA that accompanies the original WIN98DDK has no legal basis whatsoever and it would appear "Prima Facie" to follow from the inexperience in reading documents of this type by the people mentioned above.

3. Distribution history.
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Differing from many in the late 90s, I personally negotiated with the licencing division of Microsoft Australia in 1998 and the conditions required was that the binaries had to be distributed with the original EULA and that it was a condition of use of the binaries that the EULA was fully complied with by the end user. No other conditions were imposed either then or now.

When a number of people including Betov and slightly later f0dder started winding up in ALA in 2004, I made another enquiry with Microsoft to verify the EULA and while the initial advice from the Licencing division was to ignore the stupidity that was occurring in ALA, after persisting and pointing a number of people at Microsoft to the nonsense being sprouted in ALA, the enquiry was passed to
one of the internal Copyright Permissions branches which verified the original WIN98DDK EULA and the original conditions imposed in 1998 of including the EULA in the project and making it a condition of use that the EULA is fully complied with.

4. Non disclosure.
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The negotiations I have had with Microsoft on an occasional basis are subject to the normal commercial arrangement where the contents of such negotiations ae of a non-disclosure nature so under no circumstances will I divulge the contents of such negotiations, any information about any of the people I have dealt with at Microsoft or provide any contact data to or about any of these people.

5. Dispute resolution for critics of Microsoft.
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Microsoft are a public company owned by its shareholders and this effects their critics in a number of ways. As a public company, it is subject to various legal costs when evaluating enquiries made by people who attempt to be their critics so in most cases, the critic will simply be ignored as they are not willing to waste the money involved in dealing with nuisance enquiries.

For anyone who has a genuine non-nuisance enquiry, they should locate the branch of Microsoft that is closest to them in terms of country and contact the Licencing Division with any enquiries they wish to make. If the enquiry is either complex or will take a long time to evaluate, it may be necessary for the enquirer to come to some arangement with Microsoft to pay for the legal cost of the enquiry and at a corporate level, this could be very expensive.

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Why have these 4 year old links been left here ?

Find out why at the following URL.

http://assemblercode.com/kanios/