I'm not entirely happy with the beta version of the FEULA -- the Fair End User License Agreement. But, then, if I were thrilled with it, that would no doubt mean that it isn't fair enough.
Last Friday I posted version .90 of the FEULA in the EULA Reviews of my website so that we can start getting feedback from all concerned. You might recall that a few months ago I asked for volunteers to help me design a model Fair EULA that is reasonably balanced between the interests of software publishers and software customers. Since then, I've been circulating a draft to experts on both sides of the fence and have gotten some excellent ideas and suggestions.
And, like me, I'm sure most of those who participated are looking at the FEULA and noting all the things that aren't in it that they hoped to see there. Naturally, those of us on the customer side have quite a laundry list of things we think need to be changed in your standard license agreement. But those with experience writing these things have a lot of EULA provisions they believe are necessary to protect the publisher. So sticking to the middle ground between those positions never figured to be easy.
Plus, the more I tried to find compromises that would keep everybody happy, the more a bigger problem loomed. One participating attorney who I think was a bit more of a true neutral observer than the rest of us made the point early on that my original draft was already pretty long. Adding the things that I and other consumer advocates wanted to put in there, and then balancing it with more of the industry language, threatened to turn the FEULA into as long and complex a document as the EULAs we hate. And that definitely wouldn't be fair.
So in the end I took a minimalistic approach, trying as best as possible to boil it down to just those things that each side feels it has to have and no more. The software publishers get their limitations on their liability, a disclaimer that their product might not be bug free, and a reaffirmation of their rights on copyright law. The customer side gets a limited warranty that the product basically does what it's expected to do, rules that allow transfer and concurrent usage, and a reaffirmation of our rights under copyright law. (We do have some, you know.) It's still not as short as I'd like, and there's still too much legalese, but I think it's a start.
Even if the FEULA were perfect, I harbor no illusions that the major software publishers will be beating a path to our door to adopt it any time soon. In the current legal and political climate, I'm not sure a large public company will see any point in cutting customers an even break unless forced. But, as we've seen, some smaller software companies do eschew one-sided EULAs, and perhaps with the FEULA we can encourage more to do so. So, yes, the beta version of the FEULA is just a fair effort, but that's the way of compromises. Now it's up to you to make it better. There's already the beginnings of a very good discussion in the comments posted by readers to the beta FEULA, with suggestions for improvements on both sides of the coin In fact, by the time you see it, we might already be on version .90.1. So, whatever your point of view, take a look and see if you can tell us how we can do fairer job of being fair.
Read the FEULA and post your comments about it here, or write me directly at Foster@gripe2ed.com.
12:43:15 AM 
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