A few months ago, Microsoft purchased the company Sysinternals. A company responsible for some great programs - most of them useful for troubleshooting Windows problems, such as Process Explorer, File Monitor, Registry Monitor among others.
The other day (in the Quixotic quest) I needed to get another copy of File Monitor, so I headed over to http://www.sysinternals.com and watched as it re-directed to a Microsoft site. Well, now that's a change. I started wondering what other changes might have been made, and then I stumble on this Licensing FAQ page. Now that's really new. Just for fun I pulled an older version of File Monitor off of my home server and I checked it's licensing:
This software is provided "as is", without any guarantee made as to its suitability or fitness for any particular use. It may contain bugs, so use of this tool is at your own risk. We take no responsilbity for any damage that may unintentionally be caused through its use.
You may not distribute Filemon in any form without express written permission of Mark Russinovich or Bryce Cogswell.
If you are interested in redistributing Filemon, either in original or modified form, or wish to use Filemon source code in a product, please send e-mail to licensing@sysinternals.com with details.
Simple. Clean. Nice for anyone who needs to use their software to fix problems.
Now back to the biggie I noticed on that Microsoft page:
Q: May I freely load or use Sysinternals utilities on computers that I support but do not own?
A: No. You will need to contact Microsoft Sysinternals Licensing (syslic@microsoft.com) and inquire about fee based licensing options.
What? This is a joke, right? Some of the best utilities ever written for troubleshooting problems on WINDOWS computers and Microsoft has now restricted their use. This isn't a small change, this is a HUGE change. Why even keep it free for download?
Update: I've written an email to both Mark and Bruce of Sysinternals using the email addresses found in that old license. I doubt I'll get a response, but it would be interesting to know if they know about this change.
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