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Sell Your Computers, Keep Paying MS For Licenses
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Licensing 6.0 requires a company to pay up on software maintenance when the computers that are covered under the license are sold off. Here's the kicker though: MS is no longer obligated to provide maintenance even though the contract is paid up! Read the Infoworld article."
No, you got a discount from the retail cost of ME for the OEM copy that came bundled with your laptop. The OEM license is limited and for that computer and that computer only.
If you pay full retail for a boxed copy, you can use it as long as you want, so long as you only use it on one machine at a time.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If I sign a 4 year maintanaince contract with Pedros lawn care, I have to keep paying even if I move and the new owners dont want them running around the yard spraying pesticide.
That's a rather poor analogy. Perhaps this would be more accurate:
- Pedro demands the contract be paid in full prior to moving.
- Pedro then refuses to care for the lawn even though the new owners want the service.
- The new owners are forced to buy their own lawn care contract.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
We are under EA (enterprise agreement) version 6 here at my company and this is how it works. Once a year you tell MS how many computers are using what software products. This only happens once per year. Yes, if you cut the number of machines in half you won't see an immediate savings until the next time you give MS your numbers.
However, if you end up doubling your computers you come out ahead: you basically get free use of the software until you update your numbers with MS.
This also means you could get free use of software if you only used it for part of a year. For example, if you give MS numbers each January, you could install extra stuff in February, remove it in December, and MS would never have to know you used it.
The EA does end up saving money if you were going to upgrade all the time anyway, or perhaps only skip one version. If you tend to skip two or more versions, the EA would most likely cost you more money.
yes, that is the way it works. Activation keeps you from running it on more than one PC at a time, but you can use it on other PCs when you trash/upgrade the old one. I gave a boxed XP Pro to a friend and he's reactivated the same copy at least 5 times in the last 14 months due to upgrades/replacements/giving away the POS it was originally on, etc.
OEM versions only allow a single install on a single machine, which is why they are so much cheaper.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Not that anyone who isn't actually buying or selling divisions of companies cares, but here are a couple of other things you might think about to make sure you're protected:
- make sure each legal entity is the licensor of its own licenses (ie. Bluelight should have been the licensor, not Kmart); then when the division is sold or divested, it is transparent to Microsoft (you may lose some volume discount here, of course);
- if you haven't done the above or are selling assets instead of equity, set up a permanent lease of the computers to the buyer instead of transferring ownership; make sure payments are structured (probably through some sort of escrow account or trust) so the lease is a lease and not a sale;
- in a bankruptcy, ask the judge to tell Microsoft to stuff it, which he may well have the power to do, and if he's a Windows user will certainly *want* to do.
Does it need to be said? IANAL.
On a related note, why doesn't some unemployed entrepreneur out there start a company that buys unused MS licenses (for Windows and Office, say) from companies that are downsizing or going out of business, then resell them to large companies that are being audited by MS? I know a few that would pay decent money just to not have to sort out the mess that is their file cabinet full of licenses, even if they do lose SA.
Milo
This statement is incorrect. Compare the EULA before and after installing SP2 (or whatever the latest big service pack was). You'll notice a BIG change in the section labeled "Transfer".
Originally, my retail box of Windows XP Pro stated I was explicitly allows to transfer XP from one machine to another, provided I deleted the first copy.
After the upgrade, the EULA stated "The SOFTWARE is licensed with the HARDWARE as a single integrated product and may only be used with the HARDWARE." It goes on to state that if I sell the hardware, XP has to go with it.
This is from a full retail copy, folks. Take a look at your own EULA, \windows\system32\eula.txt. Also note that I never saw any indication this EULA was being updated in the SP2 installation process (and I read the presented update EULA there in full).
No need to jump off the cliff, I have made this suggestion many times to people who dislike microsoft's policies and are "stuck", basically, when it comes time to upgrade a certain product, consider the alternative, and slowly move on to another solution, just take your time, eventually, 3-4 years you will be rid of ms completly, with a very low cost as the transition will have been slow.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
The answer is, most contracts are in some way transferrable. If your aunt dies and leaves you a computer, its warrantee is transferred to you... in most states it's actually illegal to have it not transfer. If you sign up for three years' prepaid DSL in a house of six college students, and then transfer after the first year, you can (I have) transfer the service over to somone else's name, as long as they're at the same address. If your car comes with 60,000 mile power train protection, it doesn't matter if your car was sold eleven times, you're still entitled to it. (Unless your car has been sold as a salvage vehicle.)
There are non-transferrable contracts, but those have to be scrutinized carefully. For example, the idea a non-transferrable *END-USER* software license has been invalidated by the courts a number of times. Right of first purchase comes with the right to transfer your license to anyone else. (Do you honestly think there would be any way of transferring licenses for MS software if this weren't the case? There is, as long as it wasn't an OEM copy of Windows... and even then you can transfer it as long as you sell the hardware in tandem.)
Here we have a software purchase agreement which is nontransferrable. It's just that this one is for a big company, and so MS can, perhaps, get away with it.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
sorry guys, I love linux as much as the next guy, but the average 50 year-old in HR ISN'T going to be able to use it
If Linux is properly configured the 50 year-old in HR will be able to use it as well as he/she uses Windows (which may not be very well, but that's another story). And the sysadmin gets an advantage that Linux is much easier to protect from clumsy users. My wife uses Linux at home, she cannot trash the system accidentally. When the kids start messing with the "buttons" they're only going to risk her files not the system.
The only time I would recommend Windows is if there is a critical application that does not have a replacement in Linux. The list of those apps is getting smaller by the day.
Sig is on vacation
Uh, you must not be in AG. As a sysadmin for an AG brigade, I can tell you that I have alot of XP computers under my control. Not my choice mind you, but the Army DOES use XP. XP does your 201 file, your life insurance, and your orders. They may not be in a tactical enviroment, but XP is alive and well in the Army.
PFC Gruhn
G1/AG Automation, the Dilbert Guy
I Corps, Fort Lewis, WA
"Serve and Sustain"
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
The other point is that contracts usually get judged solely on what's contained inside of them, unless there's fraud, illegality, mistake, mutual recission, and a few other exceptions. So if you want to know what you've gotten yourself into, then RTFC. There are no state or federal laws (with a few small exceptions) that force you to agree to certain things, so it's all in the contract. And you don't need a law degree to understand them, either. Most of the legalese is shorthand so that broad concepts don't have to take pages and pages of explanation. Get a law dictionary (don't use Black's if you're a novice- it explains legal terms with legal terms, get one that uses layperson definitions) and go through it yourself. It might not be pleasant, but you'll understand more than you think you will.
IAAL
In this case, you are proposing to them an alternate contract, which they must accept. Silence can never be a means of contract acceptance. For example, if you are sent a magazine without asking for it with the legal terminology "failure to cancel in 30 days will be construed as acceptance of a subscription and we will bill you," you can't legally be held to their billing request -- and in fact, by not answering you can continue to recieve the magazine for free.
Furthermore, if you sent the contract back to Microsoft, you couldn't use the software until you either recieved a reply or decided to agree to the EULA.
Sorry, but this post suffers from flawed legal reasoning: silence or the failure to respond cannot be considered legal acceptance of a contract. Check with any lawyer...
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.