Microsoft Flip-flopping on Virtualization License

Cole writes "Microsoft came within a few hours of reversing its EULA-based ban on the virtualization of Vista Basic and Premium, only to cancel the announcement at the last minute. The company reached out to media and bloggers about the announcement and was ready to celebrate "user choice" before pulling the plug, apparently clinging to security excuses. From the article, "The threat of hypervisor malware affects Ultimate and Business editions just as much as Home Premium and Basic. As such, the only logical explanation is that Microsoft is using pricing to discourage users from virtualizing those OSes. Since when is a price tag an effective means of combating malware?" Something else must be going on here."

Comments

Price Tag

[Evil Cretin]

Since when is a price tag an effective means of combating malware? When it makes people switch to Linux.

Re:Why bother?

[carpe_noctem]

It seems that the only thing you can do on Ubuntu that you can't do on windows is troll slashdot...

Re:Why bother?

[pallmall1]

For games, maybe?

Get a console, maybe?

UAC for management

[vdboor]

You are changing the EULA of your latest product. cancel or allow? :-)

Malware

[Ravnen]

Since when is a price tag an effective means of combating malware?

I imagine it can actually be effective in combatting some forms of malware. If only 10% of users buy the high-priced version, only 10% would be vulnerable to any malware targeted at it. This would make it much more difficult for malware to spread, especially the sort that spreads from one infected machine to another.

Re:It's obvious

[Savage-Rabbit]

This is clearly Microsoft suffering a managerial battle of the wills. One half wants to bow down to pressure to reverse the EULA ban on virtulization, while the other half is strong opposed to relenting. So each half is doing a non atomic operation and since each party is working independently of the other and they are constantly interrupting each others non atomic decision making process schizophrenic statements ensue. Correct me if I am wrong but that's a type of race condition isn't it?

Re:It's obvious

[fbjon]

No no, they simply took a snapshot before the announcement, then accidentally reverted to the previous state.

Linux is the same way

[Skapare]

The virtualizable version of Linux costs 2 and 3 times as much as the non-virtualizable version of Linux. Additionally, Linux has a restriction that each copy may only be running on one machine or disk drive at a time.

Re:Market Segmentation

[ZOmegaZ]

otherwise they may just buy the version which could do everything they required

Which I believe is called XP.

Re:It's obvious

[Maxo-Texas]

So now we are playing the race card for software decisions?

Hmmph!