RE: Is www.masm32.com an official Microsoft site?

From: Bonj (Bonj_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 12/28/04 

Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 06:31:05 -0800

I was the original poster of the previous thread of this title, so presuming
that you are the site owner, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to
clear up the matter, aswell as to respond specifically to your comments,
which I've inlined.

"hutch--" wrote:

> The "OFFICIAL" Microsoft site is www.microsoft.com .=
>
> The website www.masm32.com is NOT an official Microsoft site. It is a
> violation of normal trademark to claim that a site is associated with
> or affiliated with another company/organisation when it is not.

Very good. However, since I had observed that it was possible to download
binaries from www.masm32.com which when used, printed a banner entitling them
as Microsoft products, I had hoped that someone would understand that when I
say "Is www.masm32.com an official Microsoft site?" the gist of my enquiry
was as to whether the downloading of these products from www.masm32.com
seemingly without any indication of the requirement to buy any form of
license is a practice that is authorised by their author, Microsoft - or not.
>From the garbled replies I seem to have received including your own more
recent O.P., the message I seem to be getting through the apparent fog of
disdain for MS's coffers and their products, is an admission that
www.masm32.com isn't *condoned* by MS, but that posters generally like to
regard that this lack of condonement alone glibly fails to render
www.masm32.com an illegal site.

>
> Use of the MASM32 project is dependent on proper compliance with the
> licencing which includes a Microsoft EULA for the Microsoft binaries
> included in the project.

So ... what you're effectively saying then, is that it's perfectly legal to
download masm32 binaries from www.masm32.com (your site), but that in order
to comply with the law if doing so, downloaders must comply with any and all
licensing restrictions MS may apply? (to *their* product?!)
Your site apparently fails to point out what these restrictions may be, and
seemingly doesn't require satisfaction of these licensing requirements prior
to downloading the binaries. Please explain why.

> As the licencing issue has been raised by a
> number of people rowing the GPL boat, I contacted Microsoft again
> early this year and dealt with both the licencing division and the
> copyright permission division and the response was that the EULA
> contained in the MASM32 project is valid in that context and that
> users of the binaries are expected to fully comply with the terms of
> the licence.

It's now dawned on me that what's been going on is that the publishers of
www.masm32.com seem to have been jumping through a lot of hoops in order to
frustrate MS's copyright department. This presumably rests on the loophole I
described above - that it's not the actual downloading of the binaries that's
illegal - it's the actual use of them without a license (I suppose in a way
similar to the claims by makers of CDR drives that their products are for
people to make backups of their music in case the original CDs get broken).
If this *isn't* the case, then I apologise and eagerly await your
clarification for the benefit of the rest of the newsgroup.
I don't see what amount of profit Microsoft have to make in order for it to
be justifiable to rip off their products by exploiting a legal loophole, and
if that's what you're doing then shame on you.

>
> The negotiations are of a non-disclosure nature and no information
> whatsoever will be made available to any party about the
> persons/departments/divisions involved in the verification of the
> EULA.

I wonder why.

>
> As a member of this group was stupid enough to post my residential
> address in an international newsgroup

But your revelation of it to that poster in the first place *wasn't* stupid?

>, it should be obvious that I am
> the webmaster of www.masm32.com and the information that a member of
> the masmforum posted for me is in fact the statement of the webmaster
> of the masm32 site.

> Microsoft have been both very helpful and supportive with the project
> and it again displays their goodwill to the general Windows
> development community.

I'd seriously be interested to hear more details of how, as I am honestly
hoping that my suspiciouns above are proved wrong.

>
> Any person who is interested in successfully writing 32 bit MASM for
> Windows is welcome to join the masmforum at www.masmforum.com . We
> have many very experienced MASM programmers as members and moderators
> who can help you get up to pace using MASM.

Now that sounds like an honest reason for a website.

I must say that I wasn't too impressed with the downloads from
www.masm32.com because they were old versions and functions assembled with
the ml.exe from www.masm32.com wouldn't link with the VC7.1 SDK's linker as
the assembler was too old a version. I have now deleted them from my hard
disk as I'm afraid you have as yet failed to convince me of the legality of
the use of it 'as is'.
Like I say, I really do apologise if I'm wrong and I hope that if this *is*
the case that you can perhaps seek to understand where my suspicions arise
from and put the record straight. My suspicions generally arise from the fact
that www.masm32.com promotes products that are blatantly written by
Microsoft, yet acknowledges Microsoft in absolutely no way whatsoever - and
the flames of suspicion have been fanned by the web of confusion that
surrounded it when I made a post about it, not to mention the evidence of
apparent 'wrangling' that has been going on between webmasters and copyright
people. Experience tells me that when I make a post about something that
produces that sort of reaction, the something tends to be dodgy - i.e. at
best, is perfectly legal in itself but gives rise to illegal activity by
'turning a blind eye'.

Like I say, I hope you can set the record straight.