Blue Sky On Mars

Thoughts on Building Software Products
January 21, 2005

Using CSS for print

by Kevin Dangoor

Another good one from Slashdot. XML.com: Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL. Of course, it would be nice web browsers supported all of the CSS printing goodness that they outline. On the positive side, in the comments someone mentions css2xslfo. Ironically, this converts your nice, concise CSS to the very format that the authors are blasting. However, XSL-FO can produce nice output, and it can do it today. So, having a free tool to produce good PDFs out of your HTML/CSS is a bonus.

January 21, 2005

Enforceability of EULAs

by Kevin Dangoor

Don Shelkey, the author of Enforceability of EULA’s [1] is a lawyer (not providing legal advice, of course). This article provides a quick review of how the courts have viewed End User License Agreements. It appears that in many cases, a click-through license agreement is enforceable as a contract. Good to know if you’re either clicking through, or creating/choosing a EULA for your software.

This still leaves the GPL untested. Given that there’s no “consideration” for GPLed software, and that you generally don’t even clickthrough and many GPLed packages, the GPL will probably still have its day in court.

[1] [link goes to MirrorDot because the original seems to have gone off the air]

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