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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."
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.
I suspect (hope) that desperation with the lack of popularity of Vista will force Microsoft's hand.
but could this just be Microsoft trying to squeeze yet more dollars of profit out of everything they can (i.e. now virtulization)?
I think therefore I am... a Linux geek.
Only if you believe that EULAs are enforcable.
Artificially introduced market segmentation.
Seperate the user base by requirements. To match a low, medium and high priced product range, when there is no real difference between the actual products other than artificial restrictions.
By specifically disbaling certain features from the low versions, power users (the few who will touch Visat with a bargepole), will be forced to empty their bank accounts for the high version (Vista Ultimate/Business), otherwise they may just buy the version which could do everything they required (which would be cheaper).
Less revenue for Microsoft.
This is similar to the recent debate over MS Visual Studio Express vs. Professional. The former's EULA disallowing plugins of some variety which actually loaded fine. This forced users to buy the uncrippled version for actual development. More money to MS.
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face - Ben Williams
This was already mentioned yesterday: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/20/064324 1
I've bought the software (note - this is a lie; there's no way I'm going to buy Vista any time soon). Microsoft has made their money. They should stop telling me how I can use it.
This is why I like free software. I'm treated as the owner.
"A deadlock has been reached. One task must die. We must now choose between murder and suicide."
"Something else must be going on here". No shit sherlock.
The thing that's going on is market segmentation. To put it briefly: Microsoft reckons that those customers who are likely to want to run Vista in a virtual environment have got the money to buy a more expensive version. It's the exact same principle as is used for pricing some commercial databases according to "number of CPUs in the system which is going to be running it" - anyone who's got the money to buy and the need to run a 16-processor system can probably afford to spend more on the database, regardless of whether there's any technical difference between the 16 processor version and the 8 processor version of the software.
For games, maybe?
The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before. - Neil Gaiman
It seems that the only thing you can do on Ubuntu that you can't do on windows is troll slashdot...
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Yes, but most games don't actually run well under virtualization. Or Wine for that matter.
There are however some AWESOME Linux native games:
Zsnes (every super nintendo game)
Mupen (every Nintendo 64 game)
Urban Terror (Linux Native!)
Other than those all I really miss is Grand theft Auto, which doesn't run well in virtualization anyway, and Civilization 2, which also doesn't run great virtualized, and further, is pretty damned old these days, though still more playable than civ 3 or 4.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
The reason Microsoft wants to keep the cost high to virtualize Vista is because they want people to actually run Vista as the main os. When lots of people start running linux (or parallels on macs), they are using Vista simply as a bunch of libraries to run one or two apps.
They want to remain in control of the platform, if people use mac or linux as their main os and use Windows to run one of those not-yet-supported programs the power of Microsoft wil start to degrade...
Dependency hell? =>
Microsoft gives you at least a (costly) option. Apple (correct me, if I'm wrong) doesn't.
And no, I am not a MS fanboy. I've been using Linux for more then ten years almost exclusively. Lack of hassle with licensing issues being one of the reasons for my choice of OS.
Your post would be valid if Microsoft actually gave free technical support with their OSes. However, this is not the case - usually a for-fee trouble ticket is required for anything beyond activation key issues.
For the 'very little' you can't do natively in linux. Beats dual-booting.
In my case, I have a dell axim x51v. Beautiful VGA screen, but I need outlook & activesync to get data on and off it easily as its windows mobile 5.
I use linux on most of my servers, but there's still the odd desktop app that keeps me tied to windows. Virtualization allows me to run that handful of apps while stick to linux for my main desktop. In this role though, windows XP is more than adequate. Vista would be a complete waste of resources. Still, there will come a day when microsoft kill XP, via incompatibility or just end of patches.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Actually, a lot of games do run nicely virtualized, at least on my mac with parallels 3.0. Haven't tried gaming on linux for a while, but i guess with wine/cedega in addition to virtualization you should get most games to run...
The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before. - Neil Gaiman
You are changing the EULA of your latest product. cancel or allow? :-)
The best way to accelerate a windows server is by 9.81 m/s2
Microsoft isn't stupid, and they can see the writing on the wall. Switchers pose a problem for Microsoft, because most anecdotal evidence and many studies show that switchers don't switch back to Windows. Now before you bash me as an Apple fanboi, consider this: most people who leave Windows are looking for an out due to frustration. Even if you think Mac OS X is inferior to Windows, someone looking to get away from Windows might not be the most objective person in the world. Apple's plan is to get people to switch, to just taste OS X, and then count on them not going back to Windows. Intel Macs make it "safe" for users to try it, because they can always fall back to Windows if OS X doesn't work out for them.
The most ridiculous part of the MS strategy, though, is to assume people pay attention to the EULA anyway. I recently installed XP on my Intel Mac on to a boot camp partition. Parellels is smart enough to see the boot camp partition and run in VM mode. Is that "illegal"? Will Microsoft come kick in my door? Would I be able to do the same thing with Vista (probably) even though the EULA states I can't?
Mac OSX Home Basic 129$
;-)
Mac OSX Home Premium 129$
Mac OSX Business 129$
Mac OSX Ultimate 129$
Ubuntu Home Basic 0$
Ubuntu Home Premium 0$
Ubuntu Business 0$
Ubuntu Ultimate 0$
A both OSes have home versions which allow restore of backuped Data...
For Vista you need Ultimate or Business to get restore functionality
Parallels is I believe the first to offer 3d accelerated virtual drivers. You can bet VMWare are working hard to be second.. xen will probably follow eventually on their pay versions (free versions have no windows acceleration, so it runs as slow as molasses anyway).
Within 3-4 years all this 'stuff doesn't work under virtualisation' will be ancient history - it's just going to take time for it to mature. We've just migrated all our servers to uber-powerful virtualisation boxes... if you spend 4 times as much on the hardware but can run 20 VMs on it at the same speed.. then you've gained (not to mention the decrease in power costs, the increase in available office space, decrease in noise level, etc.). One OS == One machine is history.
See also:
Nexuiz (Quake 3 clone) http://alientrap.org/nexuiz/
Planeshift (Still in alpha stage, but it works) http://www.planeshift.it/
Also check the package list in Ubuntu etc.
If you're looking for games that work under Wine, look no further than World of Warcraft, Oblivion, and so forth.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
From TFA: "For its part, Microsoft says that hypervisor rootkits are a serious threat to virtualization, and they could be right."
... oooh hypervisor rootkit!!! ... won't fool any of the guys who know enough to employ virtualization.
Surely, they don't mean to suggest that hypervisor rootkits stop being a threat as soon as the user ponies up the additional $210 or so for a Vista Ultimate edition?
Come on, M$, take your time and try to come up with a better excuse than that! Saying
So far, I can't remember a law that outlaws overclocking or unlocking additional render pipelines.
On the other hand, should I dare to mess with the software to bend to my will...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...all we get is $EULA and it's adapted on a daily base with the routine call in Redmond?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And therein lies the problem. Microsoft views virtualization as the road to rampant piracy and I can't blame them given their software validation model. It is all about money in the end. Besides, allowing virtualization in these EULA restricted products would raise all kinds of questions (as well as litigation) from those that paid more for it in the higher priced product.
On the other hand, I could be just talking out of my ass since I am only guessing.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Not even the Ultimate License allows you to watch/play DRMd content in a virtual machine. It is impossible to technically restrict what can be done with content as soon as it is played in a Virtual Machine. Audio is especially easy to make perfect digital copies of, even if it is DRMd.
Allowing home editions of Vista to be run in Virtual Machines would essentially make the DRM protection in Vista useless.
So leave Gates and Co alone. I don't want them to allow virtualization. It will make my job a whole lot easier.
Too lazy to create a sig...
VMWare is great - you create all these little servers running one app each. OR you could run an OS that multitasks properly like one of the fine UNIX OS's from Sun, IBM or HP.
Yes, I know it has other uses, but the main one is to replace the hundreds of shitty little 1RU Windows boxen in the computer room
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Products should not be sold based on how valuable it is TO YOU, but how valuable it is on its own merit. Product price should not be allowed to be based on how much money you have to spend, that does not affect the actual value of your product.
No, sorry. The price is set by how much the consumer is willing to pay for the product, because products are NOT not inherently valuble. The trick is finding a balance between manufacture cost and sell price.
The only thing that keeps this practice in check normally is law of supply and demand, but with software you have a legally supported monopoly so that doesn't help.
Indeed, this is a problem with monopolies, because what makes this mechanism work is indeed the law of supply and demand - that is, if you price something too expensive there might very well be someone willing to sell it for less. This is the reason most countries have antitrust laws in one way or another.
Which, (assuming sarcasm on your part), wouldn't rule out the virtualisation restrictions being a contributory factory in to poor vista sales. I think we can take the poor sales as a given - if vista was flying off the shelves, MS wouldn't trouble with a "fact rich" campaign to persuade potential customers to "proceed with confidence". Whether or not sales is the same thing as popularity is another question, although Microsoft fans don't usually have a problem with the notion when contrasting Windows against Linux.
But let's not get sidetracked. Even if virtualisation isn't causing Vista's sales problems, it could still be seen as doing so, internally. For that matter, if MS were going to relent a little on the more controversial features of Vista, they're more likely to give ground over virtualisation than they are to back pedal over DRM, for example. And there's probably nothing they can do at this late stage about the hardware issues. So if they were inclined to throw the potential buyer a bone, it would pretty much have to be over virtualisation.
Maybe that's what happened here. One faction was all set to change the EULA in the (perhaps slightly desperate) hope of kick-starting a wave of Vista adoption. Then someone else comes along and says "it's OK - we'll fix it in advertising" and the change got withdrawn. In some ways, this seems the simplest explanation.
And if advertising fails to fix the sales problem, we may yet see the licence restriction withdrawn.
So really, I don't think the size of the virtualisation market much matters when it comes to forcing MS' hand in this case. Because I think the pressure is coming from within. I think MS are well aware that it isn't going to address most potential buyers concerns, but I don't think that matters. Ten years and billions of dollars have been spent, and careers will be on the line over this. I think some folks at MS are starting to clutch at straws. Virtualisation must look very tempting to them.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
This is the first I've heard of this EULA restriction, and it begs a question. Software developers often use a virtualized environment for far, far easier testing of their software on multiple platforms. Do they get a different EULA that allows them to run the low-priced editions in a VM? If they're making consumer software, it would be awfully silly to deny them that convenience or force them to test on a Vista edition that few of their customers would use. Maybe you get a completely different license if you get Vista through MDSN? Which would legally mean, I presume, that a small-time developer who didn't want to pony up for an MSDN subscription and just bought a couple Vista editions at his local store would still not be allowed to virtualize for testing?
Without perfect price discrimination there will still be some deadweight loss from a monopoly. However, competition is almost never perfect either. Moreover, if a market is a natural monopoly, then the most effective use of resources is the case of a single producer, i.e. a monopolist. Beyond the wastefulness of having multiple producers in such a market, there may be potential gains in terms of technological progress, because a monopoly can use its supernormal profit to invest in research which may be beneficial overall, but would not be viable for a firm facing competitors that would also benefit from it. Technological progress is what drives economic growth in the long run, so this is an important issue.
Mind you, Windows is not a monopoly in strict economic terms, even if its dominance is high enough to produce many of the same effects.
What I'd like to see is an extremely cheap version (even free?) with IE6 and IE7 pre-installed. Nothing else apart from Flash and Windows Media Player (and the ability to install, say, Quicktime).
Web developers (developers, developers) without a Windows box cannot test websites for IE. And given IE's track record with standards compliance, this is not a good situation for Microsoft. I'm not buying a whole Windows box just to test websites in their crummy browser.
VMWare is ideal for development on multiple platforms. On the same box I can run window, HP-UX, and RHEL. Then multiple developers can use the same piece of hardware as a development/build/test platform. For that matter we have different VMs for different builds of our software so that we can write patches to the previous versions very simply. The only thing they can't do is load test as effectively as if they had their own server. I'm sure there are people who use virtual machines in their production environment but I've never met them. I would assume (possibly incorrectly) it's mostly used in major operations.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
I play Civ 4 under Cedega. It runs just fine considering I do have a recently upgraded Mobo, processor, RAM and video card. The video card is a GeForce 7600GT (hardly state of the art), and the processor is an Athlon 64 X2 5600+ which is pretty fast. The game does crash on occasion, but I've heard that it crashes on Windows as well.
I have a few older games that I play under Cedega. When it works, it usually works pretty well.
God is imaginary
Prosecution: he installed this OS in an unauthorized fashion, prohibited by the EULA.
Defense: Once he has bought it, you cannot tell him what to do with it.
Prosecution: He didn't buy it, he licensed it.
Defense: He went into a shop, paid for a disk, and has no further obligations. If that's not buying, what is? Do you think he also licensed his copy of War and Peace that he bought in the same store at the same time on the same card?
Prosecution: And, we claim damages....
Defense: Damages for what? He bought it, he installed it, he used it. Can a book publisher collect damages because I use my ordinary glasses to read it with instead of buying a new pair as stipulated in the Eula?
Well, it would be a fun case to see.
In a free market, companies are free to sell what they what at whatever price.
The problem is that it is illegal for you buy an artificially dumbed-down software product and tweak, patch, or hack it to make it perform like the fully functional version. Doing that would not be illegal in a free market.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
so, your point will be quite moot in a few months
(ps, i'm not an apple fanboi either, i prefer my os free:) I think you're sadly misinformed. That would be great news, and we'd have heard a LOT more about it. But it's not true at all. Where the heck did you hear it?
My bicyles