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Microsoft eOpen Site Down For Nearly a Week
mauriceh writes "Since Monday Dec. 7, the Microsoft eOpen license website has been mostly 'Down for Maintenance.' When we do not see this message, we still do not see most of the normal functionality. As this is Microsoft's main channel for managing and installing licenses for products such as Server, and for open license products for business, this makes the company effectively 'closed for business!' Attempts to connect to https://eopen.microsoft.com/ are redirected (after a bad certificate warning) to https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/servicecenter/sitemaintenance.html. For those who wish to activate Microsoft Business Solutions software need to obtain Software Registration keys, and these also can not be obtained, as the site http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/MBSRegistration does not resolve; instead one gets a Microsoft Search page. Telephone calls to their support numbers for the licensing program yield either busy signals, or a message saying one should 'call back later.'"
Proprietary software is not the problem. Proprietary software whose functionality requires a given service to be infallible is the problem.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Hardware distribution is an entirely different and far more complicated matter, you need sufficient manufacturing capacity, combined with sufficient supply of the source components... Any of these failing will cause significant delays, a single tiny part being in short supply can scupper your entire production run.
Software on the other hand, once you have one copy distributing more is trivial.
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I meant that the problem is not caused by the fact that the software is proprietary. Yes, if it were open, it'd be easier to fix, but the original problem of failing services would still exist.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Maybe they had a problem with Genuine Advantage. Are they using Genuine Microsoft software?
The new one not working is a separate issue.
This is madness. You can't say "Oh well they were always going to shut down on this date" without an implied "the new server will be active". It's not separate in any way, the old server going down and the new server coming up were linked events, the new server being a precondition for the old to vanish.
Unless you were saying it makes any kind of sense to adhere to deadlines and damn the customers?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley