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I was wrong, I looked at the cost of the UPGRADE license, which was ~$120. A license for a new copy is ~$200. Guess it will add _more_ than $100 to the cost.

VLK guidelines for government licensing will cause problems: selling the PC's to the public, will void the license; those PC's don't fall under the governmental licensing scheme anymore.

The requirements for VLK also differs from country to country, making a distribution nightmare.

Buying an OEM PC or Netbook also uses different licensing, as Microsoft partners with the hardware vendors, giving an even more reduced rate, in exchange for making sure that the PC's _DO NOT_ get sold with any other Operating System.

Your observation is underappreciated in too many circles. Though the EC also recognizes the need and called upon member states to get their act together, very little has actually happened on either side of the pond despite widely available, easy to use encryption technologies.

(Links and bold are added for emphasis)

on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI))
29. Urges the Commission and Member States to devise appropriate measures to promote, develop and manufacture European encryption technology and software and above all to support projects aimed at developing user-friendly open-source encryption software;
. 30. Calls on the Commission and Member States to promote software projects whose source text is made public (open-source software), as this is the only way of guaranteeing that no backdoors are built into programmes;
. 31. Calls on the Commission to lay down a standard for the level of security of e-mail software packages, placing those packages whose source code has not been made public in the "least reliable" category;
. 32. Calls on the European institutions and the public administrations of the Member States systematically to encrypt e-mails, so that ultimately encryption becomes the norm;

Further, what's kind of funny is that though businesses make all kinds of noise and bluster about security, many go ahead and put business plans and meeting minutes on servers which (not counting holes and back doors) explicitly sign over access to their competitor(s). However, see if M$ makes it easy for businesses to see what their so-called tech support is agreeing to.

If I extend my rights to you to use a copy of my code, I get to decide how you may use it.

I write a license that says

"you only have a right to copy and use this software if you agree to these conditions otherwise you have no right to copy or use this software period"

is perfectly legal and binding on you if you choose to accept these terms otherwise you have no rights whatsoever.

in fact here is a perfect example of a license that specifies conditions.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

oh and here is another

http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ ProductPage.aspx?pid=91

Both of these dictate to you what you may or may not do.

other than these licenses you have no rights to the material, software or music, unlucky.

The Microsoft Campus Agreement FAQ says:

Q. Can I use my Campus Agreement Windows Upgrade licenses and media for installing Windows on a computer that does not currently have an operating system?
A. No. To install the upgrade licensed through Campus Agreement you must have a fully-licensed version of Windows already installed on the computer. For example, if you currently run Windows 2000, your Campus Agreement Windows Upgrade license entitles you to upgrade to Windows XP. To run any version of a Microsoft Windows operating system licensed through Campus Agreement, you or your users must have a valid license for a Microsoft operating system on each PC on which the software runs. Please consult the Microsoft Volume Licensing Product List for more information about qualifying operating systems.

Ahh... There's the difference.

You're looking at volume licenses. I only deal with shrinkwrapped, retail licenses.

If you pull up the actual retail license text for any release of XP the text you cite is quite absent.

Note that the text I mentioned about Windows 2000 is also absent, despite being on an actual dead-tree copy of the EULA in a drawer in my office.

This page says that a license for XP can be downgraded to any "previous version" of Windows XP, where "previous version" was defined as XP, 2000, NT... But that later, downgrade rights were also extended to 95 and 98.... but Win ME and XP home were NEVER OSes that you were allowed to downgrade to from XP Pro.

See my previous post about authenticating users, as opposed to Anonymous. Secondly, I said Sql 2005 Workgroup 1 Processor. Please show me a link to a Authorized Reseller of SQL 2005 Standard 1 Processor for $2999. You wouldn't use CAL model for unlimited connections to SQL unless of course you have unlimited CALs. That's why you use the Processor license model. Check your facts before chewing me out. My best friend is in corporate licensing sales at MS. http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ Pur%20Archive/MicrosoftProductUseRights(Worldwide) (English)(July2006).doc#_Toc127699990

Actually, I'm speaking specifically about authenticated users that are not part of your domain. This is a common scenario for an e-commerce site, or any site that users can create accounts on. A bulletin board is another example.

In this scenario, you must use an external connector license because those users are not authenticated, and the Web Edition of Windows 2003 does not have an applicable External Connector License.

You can read more here:

http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ Pur%20Archive/MicrosoftProductUseRights(Worldwide) (English)(July2006).doc#_Toc127699990

Pages 43 cover Web Edition of 2003 Server. Page 19 talks about External Connector License.

One thing the article does not speak about is licensing issues when using Virtulization. For instance MS has some twists and turns...

For instance:

One needs 2 different licenses if you run XP in XP.
You can run 4 instances of Windows Server for free in Windows Virtual Server.
You can run one copy of an older windows for free in Windows Vista.
(You can read more about this on the MS site...)

For Windows XP General Purpose license User Rights:

http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ PUR.aspx

Download and read document, section "Microsoft Desktop Operating Systems" which reads:

  I) Installation and Use Rights.
    a) You may install up to two copies of the software on one device.
    b) Except as provided in Section II.a and II.b below, only one user may use the software at a time.
    c) You may run a prior version in place of the licensed version for either or both of the copies.
    d) You may only use the copies on the device on which you first install them.
    e) You may use the software on up to two processors on that device at one time.

Thus this means that I can install and use XP as Bootcamp native and Parallels VM guest using only one license.

yay!

http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ ProductPage.aspx?pid=91

there's a 'downgrade rights chart' which has the following text:

"Q. Can I downgrade my OEM version of Microsoft Windows XP Professional to Windows 98 (Second Edition)?
A. Yes. OEM Downgrade Rights for desktop operating systems apply to Windows XP Professional only. Please note, OEM downgrade versions of Windows XP Professional are limited to Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0, and Microsoft Windows 98 (Second Edition). End users can use the following media for their downgrade: Volume Licensing media (provided the end user has a Volume Licensing agreement), Retail (FPP), or System Builder hologram CD (provided the software is acquired in accordance with the Microsoft OEM System Builder License). The downgrade operating system is governed by the Windows XP Professional EULA, and the end user cannot use both the downgrade operating system and Windows XP Professional."

i've found ms licensing to be very responsive over the phone, you can confirm whatever questions you have regarding the specific license of product you have (retail, oem, volume, etc).