On Tuesday 08 February 2005 04:23, Benjamin Meyer wrote:
> Has anyone else read the license agreement for Visual C++?  It says
> something along the lines: "You can not use it to develop any word/excel
> product or products that will be used on other operating systems."  I can't
> seem to find it right now

I'll quote from my license for MS Visual Studio Pro 6.0:

"1.1 General License Grant. Microsoft grants to you as an individual, a 
personal, nonexclusive license to make and use copies of the Software for the 
sole purposes of designing, developing, and testing your software product(s) 
that are designed to operate in conjunction with any Microsoft operating 
system product.

1.2 Documentation or Electronic Documents. [...] you may use documentation 
identified in the MSDN Library portion of the Software as the file format 
specification for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, and/or 
Microsoft PowerPoint ("File Format Documentation") solely in connection with 
your development of software product(s) that operate in conjunction with 
Windows or Windows NT that are not general purpose word processing, 
spreadsheet, or database management software products or an integrated work 
or product suite whose components include one or more general purpose word 
processing, spreadsheet, or database management software products."

Nothing else in the document seems relevant to your question (though the bit 
which says not to use Java to control a nuclear reactor is kinda funny). In 
particular, doesn't seem to be a restriction on developing products for use 
on other OSes so long as whatever you're developing is designed to run on 
("operate in conjunction with") Windows too.

And as long as I don't use the documentation on the MS Office file format 
(which they seem to have forgotten to provide anyway), I can still develop 
competing Office tools. Clearly MS realise it's their file formats which give 
them vendor lock-in.
-- 
Thanks,
Richard
 
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