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Microsoft eOpen Site Down For Nearly a Week

Posted by kdawson on from the service-available-but-not-to-you dept.

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.'"

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Time for some free software zealotry... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do I even need to rant, or does the story make it clear why proprietary software is a problem?

    --
    Palm trees and 8
    1. Re:Time for some free software zealotry... by v1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Proprietary software whose functionality requires a given service to be infallible is the problem

      and just two stories down is another article telling how MS let a cert expire now and it's causing software written in 2003 to lock users out... MS is just flush with examples of this flawed concept today...

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  2. One thing which hasn't been mentioned yet by jimicus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Microsoft are trying to rationalise how their licensing works. Historically, they've had a myriad of different websites you had to use depending on if you have an Open Subscription License, an Open Value License, an MSDN license or a license that you made up yourself with a box of magic markers and a sheet of paper.

    They're certainly trying to merge Subscription and Open Value right now - I recently purchased a few licenses on the OVS plan (the website for which is being shut down) and I'm having trouble accessing them on the "new" system.

    This isn't another "gosh how fragile everything is" story. This is a bog standard "some f*ckwit decided to go live with the new system without testing it properly" story. The only eyebrow-raising part is that you would expect Microsoft to have a whole brace of plan Bs in place at the drop of a hat for just such an occurrence.

  3. Re:Maybe it was running Vista... by ElizabethGreene · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As it turns out, my comment was premature. The site that is supposed to replace the eOpen site is broken. You can manage agreements or keys, but downloads aren't working.

    $64 Moebius Question: Is it broken because of slashdot or slashdotted because it is broken?