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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."
Tell me Mr. Anderson: what good is a MICROSOFT LICENSING 6.0 if you are unable to KEEP USING IT AFTER YOU SELL YOUR COMPUTERS?
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!!!!
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!!!!
" what if my computer catches fire, and is reduced to carbon? do i still keep on paying to MS?"
Give us your URL. We'll find out.
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.
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
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."
OK,
How does April 23rd sound ?
Seriously. It's fine to say 'we should', we see
that alot on slashdot (phone your political rep. etc.). Let's do something. Pick your favourite
vendor that doesn't support linux yet, call them
on April 23rd.
I think we (slashdot readers) have more influence
than we often think we do.
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).
better way to put it:
-hey, there's this company that wants us to pay them even if we stop using their product and there's an extra contract included that gives them rights to anything we have on our systems if they would want it. the contract also includes an extortion option for them we can do nothing about, and the system is going to go through expensive forced migration to another backwards incompatible system in short time, and this we can do nothing about either if we want our business to be safe. oh, and there's an alternative for using them that would free our balls from their fist.
-why exactly are we doing business with this company again?
surely, not as black'n'white as that, but if executives actually read and understood half of the stuff they agree with ms...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
License agreements are becoming more and more abusive. I decided to jump several steps ahead (short steps) and write the final EULA:
The final license agreement:
- I can do anything I like.
- You have no power.
- You can't say anything bad about me.
- Everything belongs to me.
I knew a 3-year-old who said this. He has since become an adult, which is more than I can say for some executives.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"
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