Slashdot Mirror
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."
If you don't like it, don't use Microsoft products.
You don't own software. Software is a contract, and even though you shelled out $x for a piece of software, you are bound to the agreement. Transfering a Windows license is like any other contract.. read it carefully and make sure you're permitted to do so.
I'm not saying that MS is good, quite the contrary. They will rape their customers for as much money as they can, but from a bunsiness standpoint they're just just doing business.
If you don't like it, use linux.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
..."What microsoft is really doing is saying, 'Hey, just recognize you are truly at our mercy.' "
If you didn't already know that, you just haven't been paying attention.
How many more reasons do companies need to dump Microsoft and go with unix/linux?
comment directly in my journal
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.
The same goes with many other maintanaince/support contracts. Dont like it? Do business with someone else.
We have customers who still contractually pay for support on HP big iron boxes that havent been plugged in for years.
Another case of MSFT doing the same thing everyone else does, execpt (heres the kicker!) for some reason it's "evil" because you dont like windows.
Big fat whoop. MS Licensing is a business support contract, and pretty much a standard one at that.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The answer according to microsoft is no. Some would argue that the first sale doctrine in Copyright law says differently, the truth is that it is impossible to determine until it is tested in court.
However the article addresses the issue of business enterprise and site licenses and doesn't directly apply to consumers.
IANAL so this is just what I would do, but I would not have any moral problem using it on a different computer. And since Microsoft/BSA are very unlikely to go after consumers who have no money... likely you won't ever get sued.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Not to *use* it, it doesn't. The GPL only asks for your source if you use it's source. It's like consensual sex vs rape...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
As businesses get wise to these kind of contracts, they will get smarter about entering into them. For years now, most companies have been "stupid" when it comes to IT -- but times are changing. Companies are getting MUCH more sophisticated about how they handle their IT.
This is a short term problem.
My guess is that this is just a side effect of whatever the standard contract is. When licensing software you don't want to have to negotiate a different licensing agreement with each customer unless you have to. Of course one size doesn't always fit all so this sometimes has some unintended consequences. MS can afford to ignore some of these because there aren't exactly a lot of realistic alternatives. Behavior is nearly always explained by incentives.
While I fully agree that this is not the most ethical behavior, But I also think this might fall under the category of "never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity". I think this is just something that was overlooked or ignored because it was problematic. Plus who else are you going to go to? (*cough* monopoly *cough*)
Instead of whining here are some things that you can do.
Ask computer manufacturers if their machines are linux compatible
(especially laptops)video cards, sound cards, etc.
Most have a toll free numbers.
If the don't support linux ask "them when will they?".
Ask software suppliers it they have ported their products to linux.
Call their main office. Once one company listens others will follow.
We need a "Linux Call the Manufacturer Day".
They will get the message.
Most reasonable contracts have escape clauses that kick in if you move, or some such. Very few businesses can convince customers to sign a contract that potentially leaves them paying bills and getting nothing in return. People will, as you suggest, push that nonsense away and head over to the competition.
The fact that Microsoft can get away with this is a testament to the lack of options most businesses feel they have.
No, the activation 'scheme' is to ensure its running on one machine at a time. You call MS to 'reactivate' - they purge the old record from the database, and put on a new one - when you install on another machine. (They've never really 'turned on' the activation servers to enforce this stuff).
Its like my cable provider only allowing my account to be used from one cablemodem at a time. If I replace it, I have to call and tell them, they purge the old MAC address and enter the new one.
Personally, I think its a bunch of crap and a show of good faith is in order. But then there are probably millions of the same copy of windows 2000 installed on machines. MSFT is after all, a publicly traded for-profit company.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This should be a starting point for a law that obligates the computer manufacturers and resellers to sell computers without OS or better yet with Open source Alternatives =). Let the buyer of the equipment decide whether they want to have a license of an OS that mut be payed either you keep the computer or not after some time.
Legislatures often pass bad laws. Their intentions are good, but the letter of the law often leads to ridiculous conclusions when taken to the extreme.
It usually takes many years to discover how badly a law has been written, because it usually takes many years for people (or companies) to get around to pushing the wording to its logical conclusion. When Microsoft (or the RIAA, etc.) imposes seemingly ridiculously licensing terms on the public, they're actually doing us all a service in the long run, by quickly demonstrating to legislators that the applicable public policies are (in the long run) unworkable.
We know Microsoft isn't going to "win" in the long run (they're losing our data centers already, and eventually they'll lose our desktops and office suites as well), but when they do these extremely silly things they actually help hasten their own eventual demise, by rapidly educating the public (and the policy makers) about what's wrong with current regulation.
Getting laws corrected may feel like it's occuring with glacial slowness to those of us who already understand where things are heading, but it'll actually happen much more quickly than it would otherwise, the worse Microsoft behaves. So I say, heck ya Microsoft! Charge us twice for things you don't deliver...charge us ten times, twenty! Let's show the world what the phrase "illegal monopoly" -really- means.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
No kidding.
When MS announces some new restriction or awful licensing schemes, the magazines like InfoWorld are full of letters: "I hate this" "I'm switching to Linux" "That's it, I'm through with Microsoft".
All my friends do the same thing. They curse Windows. They ask to use my Mac. They hate Bill Gates and the crap software he rode in on.
But do any of them actually switch to another platform? Nope. It's WAY too much trouble to switch your documents and programs. Even moving your email and bookmarks from wherever they are buried is a huge pain for Joe Average. Business has to keep running, and until Windows is $10,000 per copy, it will always be cheaper to stick with windows.
What to do? Keep preaching software freedom I guess, and hope that people get so sick of MS they jump to open formats.
Is that even if MS went away tomorrow, we wouldn't suddenly have a great new OS to replace them. I mean, 12 years later Linux, while having made great strides, is NOT ready for mainstream yet.
Sad but true.
Once Linux becomes capable enough to make it mainstream MS won't be able to keep it out. Because there is little real financial burden on Linux. It's an open source product where ALOT of the work is done, in essence, for free. So MS can't bully it out of the marketplace by putting pressure on their vendors until the OS suffocates itself for lack of funds like a competing comppany would surely do.
It's here to stay because nobody is paying for it, and nobody is financially burdened by it. So it developson it's own, with TONS of fierce competition from MS. And it does nothing but grow and grow.
People should STOP complaining about Ms being a monopoly and START contributing to Linux/GNU.
One of the above posters said if you don't like it, don't use it. Thats dead wrong. As with everything else in life, if you don't like it, do something to change it. Do something to enhance Linux and/or its acceptance.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Um and what do you think businesses would have to run on those Macs? MS Office perhaps?
:-)
You can't leave the empire that easily (Bwahaahaa...
I love Linux and OS X as much as the next guy, but it's not that simple. If you think it is, I can't believe that you work in a mainly microsoft shop like myself and most clients I work with.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
To avoid using M$ products. This just highlights the extortion scheme that the Microsoft Licensing really is. It's time to start using open source products to help shut this down. Lets face it guys, our politicians have been bought and paid for to look the other way while M$ fleeces its customers. Don't want to get caught in this nightmare? Don't upgrade to new versions of M$ products. Instead start using OSS products. Don't feel that they are not as good as the M$ crap? Start by bringing it in to the non-critical areas. For instance, instead of using IIS, use Apache. Don't code for .NET, code for J2EE, Pearl, PHP or other OSS languages. You don't have to move everything over to OSS at one time. You can move gradually. Each time you move over a piece, you deny M$ its license fees. As this revenue starts to dwindle, they will either revise their extortion schemes, or suffer the fate of extinction. Plain and simple. Don't just whine about M$'s licensing, do something about it.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
"take a look at all the software you could ever want for that platform."
I own 5 different Macs, but the variety of vertical market apps for that platform just isn't there.
Yes, you can do Word, Powerpoint, Email, but what if you want to run AutoCAD. Not something "just as good", but AutoCAD? Or you need to trade MS Access files with a customer? There are lots of smaller apps that a large company needs that only run on a PC. They may be crappy, you may not like them, but you end up running them anyway because you need to.
Your comment simply shows you to be young and naive.
I thought it was common knowledge that this was how Microsoft treated their volume licensing customers. It was what we figured would happen with our several-hundred license shop when we decided to shut down, and it's played out that way.
:) And most of what we're doing has been running off our AS/400 up until now anyway.
The company I work for has one of these agreements with Microsoft, and is about to make payment number two of three in a few months. It's about $20,000 every year for 400 licenses or so. When we informed them we were closing the business before the third payment would come due, they in turn informed us that they would hold us to the letter of the contract, and require that third payment in full.
So if you decide to close your business one month into an MS volume licensing agreement, expect you will have to figure in the next two payments for part of your cost of closing the business. Or else file bankruptcy to get out of it. Either way, Microsoft will inform you that you owe in full to the last penny of your agreement if you try to get out early, and you'll be left holding the bag at the end with whatever version of the software was the "latest" at the time the SA ran out. It sucks, but at the time the decision was made the company was moving to become an all-Microsoft shop. I came in several months after they abandoned that approach (thank goodness), but we are left with the legacy. So we'll be forking out another $20K next year for 360+ unused seats if we want to get the most value out of the contract, even though we'll have a handful of people as a skeleton crew.
This is yet another reason I pushed hard for an all-GNU/Linux approach. Unfortunately, we discovered to our disappointment that GNU/Linux cannot yet handle the needs of a small financial institution like ours. You can chalk that up to lack of good bank-level accounting, payment processing, recovery (in the repossession sense, not tape backups), and loan origination/management software. Eh, well, the stuff for Windows isn't much better than doing it by hand yet either unless you're really big
Oh, yeah, what was my point? Right, if you buy into these agreements, what you save in convenience you pay in terms of contract inflexibility. Know what you're getting into at the get-go, that it's not something you can get out of or "transfer" (despite language to the contrary in the contract which is only for small numbers of machines to individual transferees with somewhat onerous record-keeping requirements), and that you're not really paying for ongoing support, but instead just for the licenses to use the product.
Makes me wish I could start up a new company using solely free software, making annual grants of $20K or so to free software developers...
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
"Why is the "one computer at a time" line okay? If I bought the software why should I not install it on all my computers?"
... the alternative is a whole lot of out of business companies. Then you get no software of "retail value" at all...and no support. In short: your plan would fux0r the "electronic economy."
Because that's how the system works now, and that's how it sould work in the future: One copy per machine or one copy in use at a time on multiple machines. Don't let the "freedom" Linux grants you to cloud your thinking in an economic matter such as this. If it was your way (buy it once, install it anyplace you want) the cost of software would go dramatically up since software makers need to make money and with the lower sales comes the need to increase per unit pricing to off set that
So the HMO's need to do what the visual effects industry did. Get together, announce their plan to move to Linux/FreeBSD/MacOS X in the next x years, and if the apps don't follow then contract their own versions.
Neeless to say Maya, Houdini etc. all were ported to Linux when given the ultimatum.
If I sign a 12 month lease for a building and my company folded two months, I still owe rent for the next 10 months.
Just because the company goes out of business doesn't mean it automatically get's off the hook for its financial obligations.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
And this would be a bad thing?
I drank what? -- Socrates
buy a cell phone w/ 2 year license
lose cell phone after 6 months
still pay remainig 1.5 years left in license...
How hard is that to understand?
This is easy to understand, and fair.
The cell phone network heavily subsidizes your purchase of the cell phone. equipment. They want you to commit in order to get that subsidy. You can't just buy the phone, and then switch service in 30 days, taking the phone that they mostly paid for over to their competitors network, paying the competitor for network service.
There is no such comparison here. If I'm going to pay for 3 years of upgrades, even if I pay today, then it seems fair that this covered computer should get three years of upgrades, even if said computer is in someone else's hands. You can't have it both ways. (Of course, Microsoft can because they have monopolost control -- the very definition of which is not the absence of competition, but one of control where they can get away with stuff that they could not in a non-monopoly situation.)
If I pay for 3 years of insurance, the covered computer gets coverage for three years. What is so different here? If I cancel the policy, then I stop paying, and stop getting coverage.
Why are you trying to defend Microsoft's unfair practice? (Just curious.)
If I'm 1 year into a 3 year payment and upgrade plan, then why wouldn't it be fair that the software on my computer today is fully licensed if I cancel the plan today. It is also fair that I should get no further upgrades under the plan. But not getting either of these is simply unfair. Remember this plan is upgrade advantage. Not acquisition. You still have to acquire the product before enrolling it in upgrade advantage. I stop paying in 2 months, I stop having any rights to upgrade at that time. The original acquisition, and any upgrades received thus far should be mine. Shouldn't they? (If everything were fair.)
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
If I sell my cell phone, I can transfer the agreement to someone else and have them take over the service.
OTOH, if I sell my computers licensed via this scheme, I have to pay off the standing costs *and* they need to buy new licenses for themselves.
Big difference.
Run something else!
There arent that many killer apps not availiable on alternative OS any longer. On a average company you can come a long way with linux if you plan for linux from day one. Same with Apple albeit more expensive hardware is required. The only problem as i can see it is if a company is tailored to run on Microsoft software. With licenses like that it sure looks as if its is well worth the pain to migrate away to ABM.
Im sitting on a friends Windows right now and i feel it lacks a lot of things. The ONLY thing Windows has is more applications, as an OS it is just an empty shell.
HTTP/1.1 400