A heartening development over the last few months has been the appearance of several programs or websites devoted to analyzing EULAs. Some, like the "EULAlyzer" at Javacool Software, even offer automated scanning of EULAs to pick out the dicier terms for you to consider. It's a great idea, and one that promises as these tools improve to give consumers a fighting chance against the many purveyors of one-sided "agreements."

But even with the customer side getting more help from the technology, the odds are still heavily stacked against us. Many software publishers still hide their terms until after you purchase the product, and then spring the license on you during installation when you're eager to start using the program. That means each customer must individually do a EULA analysis with whatever tools they have at their disposal at that moment, and even some of the worst spyware terms might slip through the cracks as a result.

To make EULA analysis more of a collaborative effort, and to sharpen the tools that can help us spot the nastiest terms, the first step is to put the licenses someplace where we can all see them and comment on them. That's the kind of thing wikis are built to do, which is why I've begun the EULA Library on my GripeWiki website. And I've started seeding it with some of the license agreements like those of Autodesk, Hilton, and Sony where we've already identified some of the most egregious terms.

One thing I'm not certain about is which of many possible methods we should use for debating the uglier points of a particular license, so we'll use some of these classically bad EULAs to do some experimenting. And I'd appreciate any of you with licensing, legal, or wiki expertise clicking on the EULA library's discussion tab and helping us figure out the possibilities.

But of course we're going to need everybody we can get to help us find all the bad EULAs out there. So if you run across a license agreement that you think should be brought to our attention, feel free to post it. If you can't figure out how to do so (and I'll admit wikis are proving to be a bit tougher usability-wise than I'd expected), e-mail it to me at Foster@gripe2ed.com and I'll post it for you.

The basic idea of the EULA library is to have as many eyes as possible scouting for bad terms and revealing them for all to see. It can't hurt to try, and if in the process we can help build some tools that put customers on a little more equal footing with the vendors, it will be well worth all of our efforts. If we must try to read these license agreements that are so deliberately made unreadable, a library is just one of the things we need. But at least this is going to be one library in which you will not be encouraged to keep quiet.

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