1st Week: Help! Help! We're being repressed!

TechWeb reports on the licenses for Microsoft Windows Vista, due out... well, some time. So just how much will you "own" of Vista, should you buy it?

Well, of course the answer to that is "none", and has been for some time thanks to the barely-legal End User License Agreement ("this software is licensed, not sold", among other things). As an end-user, though, Microsoft are trying very hard to control what do with their new baby.

Ever upgraded a computer, ditched the old one and installed Windows on the new one? You can now only do that once. Says the license:

The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device becomes the "licensed device".

Interestingly enough, this sort of limitation seems to be illegal, at least in America. In 2001, in a case between Adobe and SoftMan, the judge ruled that

...the terms of the Adobe EULA at issue prohibit licensees from transferring or assigning any individual Adobe product that was originally distributed as part of a Collection unless it is transferred with all the software in the original Collection. This license provision conflicts with the first sale doctrine in copyright law, which gives the owner of a particular copy of a copyrighted work the right to dispose of that copy without the permission of the copyright owner.

More coverage of that story was at Linux Weekly News and The Register.

It gets better, though it might take some explaining. Unless you're a techie yourself, then the following might go right over your head:

You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system.

"Virtual machines" or VMs are, as computers become more powerful, becoming more popular. Tools like VMware allow you to run an operating system within an operating system. You can boot into Windows, then boot up a Linux VM, and run both operating systems simultaneously. As well as being useful for developers, who need to test their products on a variety of different platforms, it has benefits for home users: Why worry about spyware and viruses when surfing the web, when you can load a VM with a browser, use that, and once you're done you can restore it to its initial state (including getting rid of stored personal data etc).

None of which violates the new EULA, as long as Vista is the "host" (that is, the real) operating system. Where this gets interesting is when you look to the developments that both Intel and AMD are making in the field of virtualisation. It's easiest to explain with reference to a diagram, so here's one from a presentation "Xen and the Art of Virtualisation":
What this shows is four different operating systems, running each as if they were the host OS, thanks to the Xen layer. Microsoft's EULA stamps all over this party (though it should be said, the same restrictions do not apply to the more expensive and undoubtedly more bloated versions of Vista, just Home Basic and Home Premium).

Oh - and if Vista decides to believe you've got a pirated copy of it, whether you have or not, it will severely limit your use of the OS and your computer. If you're one of the law-abiding people who buy Vista in the shops, you could find it not letting you use the internet, other than Internet Explorer for one hour at a time (gah, it's like my parents!).

Think you're safe with a genuine copy? Past experience tells us otherwise, as this article reports.

Scrolling through the posts on Microsoft's official WGA Validation Problems forum is like reading accident reports from a multiple-car pileup on Interstate 5. Many of the victims are completely innocent and have no idea what hit them, and cleaning up the mess can be a nightmare.

If you're a Windows user, and/or planning to upgrade to Vista if/when it is released, that should send a shiver down your spine. You have been warned...