2 hours ago, ArcticFoxie said:

This article  --  https://newtech.law/en/is-a-licence-really-forever/  --  seems to suggest that a license agreement expires after 5 years.

You know, that article begins with "Under Polish law, a licence ..."

So all you have to do is to prove in a Court (where?) that Polish Law applies to a user (say) from Honk Kong about a software developed by a programmer in the Czech Republic.

Good luck with that.

Only for your interest, legalese is written legalese:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/legalese

 legalease could hypothetically be a legal agreement for a long term form of rent. , but it is actually a sort of insurance for legal assistance:

https://www.legaleaseplan.com/

And now, for NO apparent reason, a reliable source for the expression "the rest of this stuff it's English to me" ,

https://www.texasbar.com/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Say_What_&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=35605

Quote

From John Phillip Mustachio of Houston, this excerpt from the trial testimony of the plaintiff, whose first language is Greek.

Q. What I'm trying to do, Mr. Emmanonil, is to show that you have quite a bit of experience in owning and operating real estate, do you not?

A. No. The only one experience I have is just to - to know how is the valuable of the land is going to go up or down. That's I'm good only. But legal phrase like this one, I'm zero. Like I say earlier, I have gift know when is good piece of land or not. The rest of this stuff it's English to me.

 

i.e. the symmetrical for "That's Greek to me" or "It's Double Dutch":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me

 

jaclaz

 

A software becomes dead or abandoned only when an entity (rights holder) ceases to exist, at least in the US. This is why no Microsoft product is considered abandonware because Microsoft still exists. Enforcement of copyright or license doesn't even matter as far as the law is concerned, for the law is only envoked upon complaint. There is no enforcer of license for the most part. Microsoft handles enforcement via audits, and this typically only covers products that are currently in support. For Bigmuscle, they may not post on the forum but they still visit and read PMs (and fixes webpages), so as far as we are concerned, Bigmuscle still exists.

So if the software is not only working on certain versions of Windows, it doesn't matter. The advice to not donate to use the software on newer versions is OK, since there is no implication or instructions on how to do things that would violate that license.

That makes sense.

I was a moderator at a forum for a web filtering proxy program called "Proxomitron".

Its creator passed away a few years back and I recall there being some debate at the time as to the future of "Proxomitron".

I actually still use "Proxomitron", but only to send Microsoft Excel data queries through.