[RESOLVED] command.com copyrighted?

[Tech666]

To the guy that posted "Who Cares?"

well , the issue here isnt whether or not you care , its whether or not its legal.

as it stands it is not legal. right or wrong , isnt the case.


would you care if i stole your car? ... why?... i felt like owning it instead of you...i didnt feel you shouldnt just freely give your car to me.

its an old argument. is taking a penny stealing? at what point does theft become theft?

[Joker1]

Originally posted by Tech666:
<STRONG>its an old argument. is taking a penny stealing? at what point does theft become theft?</STRONG>

What about those little bins, ya know like at the grocery store checkout "need a penny, take a penny. Have a penny, leave a penny." there should be the same thing for old Ms-dos and Win3.11 licsenses. We could just stockpile them till someone needs them.

[Platypus]

Originally posted by Tech666:
<STRONG>To the guy that posted "Who Cares?"

well , the issue here isnt whether or not you care , its whether or not its legal.

as it stands it is not legal. right or wrong , isnt the case.


would you care if i stole your car? ... why?... i felt like owning it instead of you...i didnt feel you shouldnt just freely give your car to me.

its an old argument. is taking a penny stealing? at what point does theft become theft?</STRONG>

666 is right. The one who will care, and is entitled to care, is the programmer whose livelihood depends on their copy rights, or the business operator whose family and employees are affected by software piracy (either by loss of income, or consequences of illegal activity).

The copyright laws exist to protect the rights of those who create works of value, including software, and we should respect this.

What might be an interesting consideration is the precedence established in past practice, when it was normal to have multiple copies of the boot code and the command processor on floppy disks, before hard drives became standard issue. Microsoft will have given instruction in their user manuals on how to create boot disks, so unless they have declared this breached the licence, there may be a case to suggest it has been considered normal for that code to be copied on many occasions.

However, as I mentioned in a previous post, I suspect Microsoft's concern is where a system is sold supposedly with no operating system. If they're not getting any licence fee, they're saying "play it straight, don't put any of our code on the system". I would feel it would be unreasonably zealous to say command.com couldn't be on the hard drive where a licence is being sold with the system.

[tyremanb]

i think that it is totally stupid that microsoft are acting this way. its not like anyone can use a system with just command.com on it. for most people, they want a GUI, not a DOS-type prompt, so they will almost certainly choose windows. whether they choose to put on a legal copy or not, it should be windows that microsoft are complaining about.

[darkspyre0]

man, i never thought i would see it come to this... =[ it's a sad day indeed.

[bbtech6650]

Originally posted by jeffbrown:
<STRONG>

I hope they lose as well, it sucks.

By the way, there is actually a store around here you can buy DOS and Win 3.1, still shrinkwrapped. Any buyers?

<IMG SRC="smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0"></STRONG>

I hear ya! I have a store near me that sells them for $5. hehehe!

[monster63304]

Unless you are a big business making a decent income off of it, M$ won't bother you. cause if they go after an individual, who gives copies of his windows to his friends, with the standard copyright infringement penality of $150,000 per instance, they will likely spend more money attemping to collect than they claim to have lost. So simply put, don't worry about it unless you are making a really good living off it, and if you work for a small store, like me, I have found that the best thing to do is to tell the customer that they can bring in their own copy of windows for you to install, or sell them one.

[KINGofBLEH]

Originally posted by techs:
<STRONG>I wonder when the copyright to command.com runs out?</STRONG>

The original copyright was taken out in 1981 and lasted 17 years (legal limit). It was renewed in 1988 and will expire again in about 4 years.

The funny thing is that the original developers of TCP/IP, NetBEUI and IPX/SPX have released versions of their product to public domain (no copyrights). M$ has taken full advantage of their generosity and included them in every installation CD of all of their operating systems. However, when some poor retailer who barely makes enough money to keep food on the table wants to install c:\ on a HDD to make his customer's installation experience less stressful (and therefore happier)....it's OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

<IMG SRC="smilies/rolleyes.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/rolleyes.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/rolleyes.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/rolleyes.gif" border="0"> <IMG SRC="smilies/rolleyes.gif" border="0">

[Venom88]

I can understand all of the uproar over this but there comes a time whether still copyrighted or not that a practical sense should come over this.

Without us M$ would cease to exist and therefore should cut some slack in these instances. How much money could they really loose on installing command.com?? Does it matter?? The liscensing is there to protect the people who depend on that for a living and that's completely reasonable.

But let's look at reality and the practical side of things. M$ is only out to protect it's property. There comes a point where someone own so many liscenses that when is enough enough? I own copies of every M$ OS all the way back to DOS 6.11 and Win 3.1. That's all I'm allowed to install are copies for myself.

But an added part of that reality is that the average user cannot install a copy of Windows for themselves. I've read a couple of posts that say to set the computer to boot from CDROM. That's fine but after the initial install it will constantly be looking there first and slowing down the machine if there is a CD in the drive.

Once again, the average user cannot change the boot sequence (and I don't want them in the BIOS settings) because if they could we wouldn't need to install command.com to begin with.

It's really a moot point. M$ is looking out for their best interests and we're just doing what would not seem like a big deal. It really seems to me that it's Goliath going after something much, much smaller than David. What do they stand to gain??

If so many people have to use open source to avoid breaking the laws then wouldn't M$ be adding to their own demise?

Just my .02 on the matter.

[DR]

I don't have all the details of the case but if Microsoft followed past behavior then they warned the offender before taking legal action. Not a good idea to challenge a big guy to a fight.

[Mr T]

Originally posted by Gabriel:
<STRONG>I wonder if Formatting a Drive using Command.com (with no "/s" switch) would be illigel too.</STRONG>

It most sertanly is, you must have a license for using format.com since it is part O/S to-....

[raptorGT]

Never, as long as I'm advising, they'd better shut up and listen. I've been down more roads than Bill Gates and can offer loads of incredibly useful information on software and hardware problems. Here's the real question: "Do I feel bad about writing this reply? Hell, no!" <IMG SRC="smilies/redface.gif" border="0">

[eenge99]

Wow, I had no idea my little comment would piss off so many people!

IMHO: I do not believe that Microshaft is right for what they are doing, however, it is their software. And Steve Ballmer and his new licensing scheme (scam) are going to push large companies towards M$ competitors.

For the guy who wants my car, take it. You probably want it more than I do at this point.

To SherriffQ: An apology for not posting worthy material due to temporary insanity.

To members of WinDrivers: Also an apology for not taking this topic a seriously as I should have. Of course this affects all of our livelyhoods in one way or another.

[Carlitos_Way]

As big a company as Microsoft is I dont think they should bother with such a small issue, but its the principle. I wouldn't like for someone to use something of mine without my permission. Just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in.

<IMG SRC="smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0">

[jeffbrown]

I don't know what to think, something so simple should not be so tight and controlled, however, I guess I could see their point. Just the extremity of it is what pisses me off