LabVIEW installation: Microsoft "Silverlight" EULA

*So I was in the process of installing LabVIEW2011 and was asked to read and agree to NI License Agreements, which I did, after which another Window came up asking me to agree to 2 Microsoft EULAs for “Silverlight”.

I started reading the agreements and came to a couple of paragraphs in bold font informing me that by installing the software I was giving Microsoft permission to (paraphrasing here)

  1. snoop around the computer and send information about it back to Microsoft, and

  2. allow Microsoft to automatically, without my knowledge or further permission, download and install updates on the computer

What the heck does Microsoft have to do with LabVIEW?? I do not trust Microsoft and I don’t want to give Microsoft these permissions. All I want is a way to look at the LabVIEW help, and view and possibly create small vi’s. I don’t even need to compile, download, or run them.

What is Silverlight, and why do I need to install it to run LabVIEW? …especially since I unchecked everything in the install options window except for LabVIEW and the 2012 License.

Microsoft Silverlight? It’s a web development framework, and it’s apparently used for LabVIEW web UI-related things. I can’t imagine why it’d come up in a FIRST installation…

I remember last year using the Measurement & Automation (MAX) explorer to fix a cRIO, and it used Silverlight to display info.