212854 Resource 187691 21 21 1221527054554 1317480891473 Controlled EULA: What--Me Worry?

It is reasonable to ask users to agree to a reasonable end-user license agreement.

Today, I happened across a <a title="Mozzila Demands EULA…Ouch! BAD or not?" href="http://clintonskakun.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/mozzila-demands-eulaouch-bad-or-not/" target="_blank">blog post</a> noting that, "Mozilla is demanding that FF users view an EULA the first time they start up Firefox in Ubuntu" and wondering if this was something to worry about.  This is a fair question, if by it you mean, "Does this particular EULA contain any terms or conditions that are unreasonable or undesirable to me?" If, however, you are objecting to the very existence of an EULA (end-user licence agreement), I think you're being a bit naive.  For example, Mark Shuttleworth went so far as to report the very existence of the Mozilla EULA in Firefox 3 as a <a title="Ubuntu Bug #269656" href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/269656/comments/5" target="_blank">bug</a>, stating, "... I would not consider an EULA as a best practice." Come on, Mark, seriously? There are many reasons why someone providing a service might want to have a EULA—not all of which are evil or conspiratorial. Ever sign an agreement before renting a car, or a bike, or cross-country skis? If someone offering a service—of any kind—wants to clarify the terms under which they are comfortable offering that service, why is that unreasonable? Now, you might reasonably take issue with specific terms in a EULA, (like Chrome’s EULA claiming <a title="Google Chrome EULA Claims Ownership of Everything You Create on Chrome, From Blog Posts to Emails" href="http://gizmodo.com/5044871/google-chrome-eula-claims-ownership-of-everything-you-create-on-chrome-from-blog-posts-to-emails" target="_blank">ownership of everything</a> posted via the browser, which is ridiculous, and which even <a title="Google on Chrome EULA controversy: our bad, we'll change it" href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080903-google-on-chrome-eula-controversy-our-bad-well-change-it.html" target="_blank">Google acknowledges</a>) but taking issue with the very existence of a EULA is naive. 10 application/xml false end-user license agreement EULA Google Chrome There are many reasons why someone providing a service might want to have a EULA—not all of which are evil or conspiratorial. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.186 Safari/535.1 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.42.215.41 false true false false true 188081 false false true false false false true 187691 blog blogsite/FASeidl/web