Masm page in wiki

[Dkelly]

The masm page in the wiki is way off base.

It points to the masm32 project. The masm32 project is an IDE that's designed to make using masm easier... It's created by some guys that have nothing to do with microsoft. It isn't masm! Masm is owned and updated by microsoft. Also the license agreement link on that page suffers the same fate.

You can download MASM version 8.0 for free from microsoft here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

The real EULA for masm seems difficult to find

Dan K

[Combuster]

From the microsoft license (not that of masm32)

You may copy and redistribute the Sample Code and/or Redistributable Code (collectively "REDISTRIBUTABLE COMPONENTS") as described above, provided that
(...)
(c) the REDISTRIBUTABLE COMPONENTS only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows or Windows NT;

From that, it means to be able to use microsoft assembler you must
1) make sure nothing that comes with masm is included in or with the final program.
Which is probably why masm32 says that you can not use it for non-microsoft systems. I can't assert that it does not include copyrighted material into the final binary.

Summarized, using masm is a legal hassle. Unless you know what you are doing, MASM + osdev is a tricky combination. To be on the safe side, one should not use it.

I traced a few of the other 'strange' clauses of masm32 to other clauses in the original document. i.e. PD and GPL code are at risk too. Wether that is because the original license indeed restricts that or wether they wanted to be on the safe side because the eula is horribly ambiguous, I can not tell.

Disclaimer: i'm not a lawyer. information at your own risk.

[Dkelly]

Actually, some timely news... It looks like this is all changing:

http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronmar/default.aspx

The important part:

"As a response to our partners’ request, we are going to remove license restrictions with Visual Studio and the Visual Studio SDK to enable you to use the Visual Studio IDE and build applications that target the platform of your choice." (i.e. non-Microsoft platforms)"

(MASM is part of Visual Studio)

This is all pretty darn cool Maybe this thread should be moved somewhere else now?

Dan K

[Combuster]

"As a response to our partners’ request, we are going to remove license restrictions with Visual Studio and the Visual Studio SDK to enable you to use the Visual Studio IDE and build applications that target the platform of your choice." (i.e. non-Microsoft platforms)"

This suggests that pre-VS2k8 microsoft produce may *not* be used for os development. That and I know of people that do use it that way. Someone should definately check wether this is indeed legal or not and post the results.

[JAAman]

what is not legal, is the use of MS ip for alternate platforms (for example, the standard library... or MFC, etc...)

as long as your not including any MS code, it shouldnt matter (there is nothing in the MS eula that prohibits such action -- its only the redistributable parts of VS that are thus restricted)

if you will actually read

You may copy and redistribute the Sample Code and/or Redistributable Code (collectively "REDISTRIBUTABLE COMPONENTS") as described above, provided that
(...)
(c) the REDISTRIBUTABLE COMPONENTS only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows or Windows NT;

this means that if you require any of the redistributable components (for example mfc40.dll), then you can only distribute these components for windows -- you cant distribute the redistributable components for alternative OSs -- in fact, it is a violation of US law for MS to allow these components to be released for any non-MS OS