[ILUG] M$ SFU 3.5 - redistribution and passport?

[Brian Foster]

 does anyone have any experience with SFU 3.5 (the
 free (as in free beer) M$ Services for Unix™)?:

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/

 as per some recent postings of mine, the company
 I work for is investigating possible alternatives
 to Cygwin.  SFU seems a possibility.  there are
 many issues here, but two which are bothering me
 considerably at the moment are:

  ①  “Passport‟?  I have no idea what this is, but
     from the reading-up I have been doing on SFU,
     before downloading it you must have one of
     these (which is supposedly free).  I myself
     have *no* interest in _anything_ M$ insists I
     have, so am extraordinarily reluctant to even
     download SFU.
      ⇒ What the fsck is it?
      ⇒ How can it be neutralized?
     (I have not yet done any research on what I see
     as a side-issue, which is also perhaps a private
     hang-up of mine.)

  ②  Re-distribution?  SFU seems to obey the shrink
     wrap maxim that you cannot read the license
     until after you have opened it up and by so
     doing (at least in the eyes of some), agreed
     to its terms.  Upshot is I haven't been able
     to definitively read M$ terms and conditions,
     but I did find a rather depressing posting of
     what is claimed to be the SFU 3.5 EULA, which
     suggests re-distribution is not allowed.  But
     we would strongly like to include whatever it
     is we decide on (SFU or Cygwin or whatever)
     with our product, and so want re-distribution
     rights.
      ⇒ Does anyone have the faintest idea what the
        story is here?

 there are, of course, numerous follow-ons, like “do
 we want to ‘tie‛ ourselves to a 90000-zillatonne
 capricious monster?‟ (who may also be a competitor),
 etc etc etc --- the above two questions are not at
 all the only issues! --- but I have drawn a bit of
 a blank on the 2nd and am quite annoyed by the 1st.

 if anyone has actually _used_ SFU 3.5, I would be
 interested hearing of your experiences.

cheers!
	-blf-
--
«How many surrealists does it take to    |  Brian Foster      Montpellier,
 change a lightbulb?  Three.  One calms  |  blf at utvinternet.ie      France
 the warthog, and two fill the bathtub   |    Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
 with brightly-colored machine tools.»   |        http://www.stopesso.com