Re: Yet more Microsoft licensing issues

Roger,

Here is my $0.02 on the subject:
1)  Dropping Windows support would not be acceptable.  Although you may 
not use it anymore, many of us use it exclusively, myself included.
2)  As far as the "mscvcr71.dll" library, the simple fix appears to be 
to install MS Media Player version 9.0 or above.  I have not been able 
to confirm this finding, but all of my machines that have at least Media 
Player 10 (one at MP 10, and two at MP 11), have this DLL loaded 
already.  Another option is just to list this DLL as a prerequisite, and 
let the end user find it.

Again, thank you for such a great tool!

Michael C.

Roger Binns wrote:
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> As some of you may know, BitPim is currently stuck on Python 2.3.  This
> is for the following 2 reasons:
>
> - - It is the version of Python on MacOS 10.3 and 10.4 and hence Python
> doesn't need to be included in the Mac packages
> - - On Windows, Python 2.4 and 2.5 are compiled with VC 2003.
>
> VC 2003 has new C runtime libraries which are not shipped as part of
> Microsoft operating systems.  (The C runtime from VC 6 is shipped with
> Windows 98 onwards).  Just to make life more interesting, Microsoft
> won't let you download VC 2003 any more and point you at VC 2006.
>
> The license for the VC2003 redistributables is incompatible with the
> GPL.  It basically requires that you restrict your users in a way that
> pleases Microsoft and requires you make them agree to a license agreement.
>
> The detail is a clause in the Microsoft redistributable license hat says
> "(d) you do not permit further redistribution of the Redistributable
> Components by your end-user customers".  The GPL is all about allowing
> you to redistribute stuff - in fact it can be summed up as "you can
> redistribute as long as you don't remove the rights to redistribute from
> those you distribute to"
>
> wxPython/wxWidgets have just come out with version 2.8.  It appears that
> on Windows this now requires a library named gdiplus.  Same silly
> Microsoft restrictions.
>
> The question is what to do about this?  To be frank I'd be quite happy
> to drop Windows support.  I no longer use it.
>
> We can freeze at current versions of Python and wxPython.
>
> We aren't allowed to include the DLLs as part of the installer, but
> could make the installer download them in concert with the user from the
> Microsoft web site.
>
> For example users would have to go to this page to get gdiplus:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6a63ab9c-df12-4d41-933c-be590feaa05a&displaylang=en
>
> To get msvcr71 I think you have to get people to download the .Net 1.1
> runtime!
>
> And since VC2003 isn't even obtainable any more, I have no way of
> compiling the extensions anyway.
>
> Roger
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