I'm in no way supporting the Vista EULA and I'm pretty much as outraged as the next poster. But then again playing devil's advocate is fun. So as the topic stated, is it really that big a deal? I mean sure parts of the EULA seems very draconian or Big Brother-ish but I wouldnt be all up and in arms about it nor will I be proclaiming on how everyone should be using Linux, too many already.

I mean sure its great that people caught the changes in the EULA. It is after all an agreement between 2 parties, MS and the user, in which case they can prosecute since the user agrees by clicking "Yes". But I wouldnt say it would have a profound impact in the current situation. For instance, most users that dont even know what formatting a drive is ( and there are a ton of them out there ) wont really care. Why? Well they want Windows and they wont read the EULA. Hell they're probably not even going to be installing it on different PC's. So they dont care at all about this EULA. They just want Windows, Office, surfing, games. Sure many have pointed out that Linux could be setup to look similar to Windows and have most of the aforementioned stuff but lets face it, in the long run it wont work. Why? Well lets say an end user purchased a really nice piece of equipment, on the cutting edge of technology even. They'll read the installation instruction, pop in the CD that has the driver, plug the device into their computer and BAAM! it'll work. Might not be able to happen on a Linux machine. Thats just one example. Another bigger example that means way more financially. A lot of institutions already have invested a lot into Windows, ie. Exchange, Office, etc. Telling them to reinvest all that wont be very realistic. So what if there are some changes in the EULA. Wont really affect them anyway since they'll get volume licensing and they wont run any virutalization software.

So who does this new EULA affect, end users. Well "duh". Ok so thats obvious, but then again so what? Most of the people that do mess around with computers probably will just go right ahead and install it on different computers or use VMWare, etc.

So who does it really affect? Lawyers most probably. Makes it easier for them to prosecute people that try to get around the protection system that Windows puts in place. Now as a buisness it would be sensible to protect your property because thats how you earn money. Agree with them on it? No. Fault them for it? No also.

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