Item — HN Reader

> So in essence Visual Studio .Net forbade one from building things like GPL software. I'm sure the Visual Studio .Net EULA is available somewhere to dig this up.

Maybe I miss something, but you literally said that they didn't allow one to build GPL software.

2 comments

I wrote "things like GPL" and said it described the copyleft licensing without naming the prominent license.

But I cannot find a version of the first (2001 or 2002) EULA, so it's possible my memory isn't exact.

Edit: All I could find https://yro.slashdot.org/story/02/08/04/132221/more-ms-eula-...

Anyway, given the Microsoft of today, it's doubtful they would try something like that, so this isn't relevant anymore, but it demonstrates that EULAs are written in the language of laws and unrealistic for users to read and grasp correctly. MIT and ISC licenses are simple to understand, whereas GPL and Apache are long and some sections are hard to follow without a law degree. Same issue with EULAs.

You missed the word 'like'. As he is no lawyer he avoided to give a concrete example, but he tried to describe the lawyer speak with a more understandable example. What is your interpretation of the EULA text?