Microsoft Revamps Licensing Plans 356
prostoalex writes "Microsoft is introducing significant changes into its licensing program, faced with competition from Linux, as Reuters article suggests. First, Microsoft starts giving away free server licenses to its Software Assurance Program customers, if the PC is not actually used in production and is not present on the network. Such licensing would be convenient for disaster recoveries, where it's important to replace a failed server as soon as possible without calling Microsoft support or licensing partner. Support lifecycle is also extended to 10 years for a variety of products, including Windows 2000, Windows XP and SQL Server 2000."
In 10 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
-- n
Re:In 10 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In 10 years? (Score:2)
Sure, some people still run MS-DOS or Novell's NetWare 3.x. I suspect someone out there is still using a TRS-80 Model III on a daily basis for their business. Is it a good idea? Well, that's for another discusion.
Re:In 10 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In 10 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:In 10 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
Microft
Probably... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Probably... (Score:5, Funny)
I could have done but I thought that if I waited a bit maybe someone else would say it and save me the bother.
Re:Probably... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Probably... (Score:4, Insightful)
You did check the hardware specs before hand, right? You didn't? Oh, well, I guess they were all newer machines then? Oh, you don't know?
Hmmm....
Re:Probably... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Probably... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Probably... (Score:5, Insightful)
We just upgraded our NT4.0 servers last month... to Windows 2000. The new software we're going to be running isn't certified to run on Win2003 yet.
The reason we upgraded? New accounting software.
Microsoft seriously overrates the value of upgrading something that is working without having a compelling reason for doing so. Sometimes I wonder if they actually use their own software at all.
Re:In 10 years? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd like to upgarde to XP, but I absolutely will not tolerate product activation in something as mission-critical as an operating system. It's not an option for me. I refuse to permit my OS vendor from deciding on a day-to-day basis whether I'm going to be allowed to boot up my machine.
That seems to be OK for most folks, so I'm just going to put my tinfoil hat back on and go back to Win2K now.
Re:In 10 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In 10 years? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In 10 years? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In 10 years? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ancient printer on top of a locked cabinet. Noone around could find a key and aside from the door in the front there was a power and cat5 cable coming out from a hole in the back.
After about 10 minutes w/ my Gerber ripping the cabinet open I discovered a 486DX running a PC-DOS print server.
Pushed the reboot button on the front of the case and to my shock it actually booted back up again (old PC HD's have a tedency not to spin back up). Tested it and it printed fine.
Pushed the cabinet back up to the wall and chuckled to myself. Made a note in our ticket system and called it a day.
Just a note: There's alot of shit out there running that sometimes the IT department doesn't even know about. I wouldn't doubt if there are a few other of these PCDOS print servers and prolly a few 3.1 machines around.
Re:In 10 years? (Score:5, Interesting)
We replaced a horrible mix of Win95 and Win98 with Win2K in 2001. There is still a bit of Win95 around, but it is dying slowly.
We are looking at Longhorn coming out in 2006 (maybe) or 2007 (probably) or 2008 (possibly). If Longhorn comes out in 2007/8 - we would not even consider upgrading until 2009. If there is no driver to change, then we would push further; Longhorn will mean new PCs, which jacks up the cost again. I could easily see a scenario where we are happily running Win2K in 2010. We might be getting a bit itchy by 2014...!
99% of our users need email, simple office and a browser. If Win2K does the job (and it pretty much does)...then what is the incentive to drop $20 million on new PCs and a new OS roll-out? And yes, some form of Linux desktop in about 2007 looks pretty attractive to me...
Re:In 10 years? (Score:2, Funny)
My Bank runs DOS! (Score:4, Interesting)
The Bank's response: It runs, it prints, and it does not crash. So why bother?
Yes, in ten years, if not longer (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, at many companies, the attitude is "even if it is broke, don't fix it unless it's stopping production outright". I just spent two weeks in a rather insane upgrade-a-thon at a customer, because they got bought by a larger company, and their new corporate IT department nearly had a heart attack when they saw the state of their systems. Many computers were stilling running Windows 95. Their main server was running Novell NetWare 4.11. These products are ten years old, unsupported, obsolete, and flat out broken. Win95 can't even get a DHCP lease without three patches (Y2K bugs). Oh, and a fleet of ten megabit unmanaged repeaters. And dead anti-virus software. And missing the disks for the backup software. And...
When corporate deployed their anti-virus software to this site, it darn near exploded. Over 8000 infected files on one PC alone. Their WAN guys were screaming bloody murder about all the worm traffic coming from this site.
It was great fun. For sufficiently small definitions of "fun".
Another nice support story... (Score:5, Interesting)
Damn thing breaks, refuses to start the procedure...
reboot gives nada...oki, I have to move myself to that lab and see for myself.
80186...yuck...Dos...yuck...
No doc, cryptic error message from the (also) proprietary software...
Call the company that made this (still exists ! yeah !!!) and they tell me they don't have ANYONE in their organisation that has any sort of experience with that old beast... and that If I am ready to wait, they can have the documentation out of deep storage in just under a week...YUCK!
BUT !!! they also have a name and phone number in their file about a guy that seem to be a specialist on the hardware...
Maybe there IS an IT Gos somewhere, smiling at me...?!?
After a quick phone call, I have some shocking news
1/ The guy is dead (god bless...) at a nice 85.
2/ The guy was the former head of the Lab...yes, the Lab I was trying to service. He took retirement some 10 years ago, and was kindly making maintenance to his former company, being the one that ordered and used the machine in his time...
ordering a full replacement machine is in the 5 zeros order....
=> I now have a nice undergraduate CS Student that is building an interface with a more modern machine (PII something I found ready for the trash bin), using Linux and the docs that came from the builder...
It might even have a GUI 8)
Re:Another nice support story... (Score:3, Interesting)
It was rare, but it did make into normal PCs. I used a Siemens PC-D [machine-room.org] during my education. It was a bit slow, had a non-standard keyboard, non-standard graphic controller, an on-board hardware debugger (which defaulted to german keyboard layout) and the BIOS was a bit weird.
Re:In 10 years? (Score:2)
Re:In 10 years? (Score:2)
Re:In 10 years? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)
Win2K Pro--once you install Service Pack 4 and all current security patches--is actually a very nice operating system for business applications and Internet access. I myself run Win2K Pro (SP4) on a home-built system that uses the Abit AB-BM6 motherboard with a Celeron "A" 500 MHz CPU with 384 MB of RAM and all programs run decently fast.
Another big advantage of Win2K Pro is the fact that software driver support for PC hardware is nothing short of superb. On a fast enough system with USB 2.0 and IEEE-1394 external connections (which are supported in Win2K since there is plentiful third-party driver support for these connections), Win2K is actually a pretty good platform for editing files downloaded from digital still cameras and MiniDV/MicroDV digital camcorders.
It's no wonder why Win2K Pro is still much-liked in the corporate world.
Yay for competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yay for competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft's domination (a much better term than "monopoly") is coming to an end.
And the courts had absolutely no part in ending it...
Re:Yay for competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Its the so called law of the jungle. With the legal systems not able to control financially powerful organisations such as M$, then the natural reaction to this problem is for open source to become one of the only competitors to M$.
Unlike the courts, in competition such as this, the vast amounts of highly payed lawers cannot be of much use.
Re:Yay for competition (Score:3, Insightful)
One word: "patents". Nuff said.
Re:Yay for competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure they can: IP lawsuits. Or even threats thereof. We live in the SCO years, after all. Now, imagine a beefed-up version of SCO, with the same agenda, more cash and more cunning. With the current state of the legal system, we were lucky SCO was in only for the PR effect.
Never underestimate the competition - especially when they can bend the rules in their favor a lot easier than you can.
Re:Yay for competition (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, I don't know about that. I think that my startup company may go with Windows. I only plan to host a single webserver to handle the 3M+ hits per month. I'm very focused on redundancy and recovery so if something --gods forbid-- would happen to the webserver, my backup cluster of 300 servers is ready to hop into action right away. It's really convenient that MS came up with this -and t
From MS' point ... (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO this is a sign that other OSs are legitimate competition. I suspect this was the reason for also extending Win98's lifecycle.
I don' see how... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, this is soo insightful. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll bet the guys in Redmond are slapping their foreheads as they read this post thinking, "All this time we have been doing things like making the Windows more stable (my laptop running XP hasn't crashed ONCE since my last reinstall) and supporting all kinds of wierd software and hardware, and making it easy to use. What we should have done is be more like Linux. That's easy to use and supports almost every component ever made, right?"
I don't know what is more sad, that somebody bothered to post this drivel, that somebody modded it up, or that people actually believe it.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to go find out which
Re:Wow, this is soo insightful. (Score:2, Informative)
modprobe bt989 ; mknod
and tahts in slackware - not exactly user friendly distro of the year.
according to hauppauge's website, it worked out the box on red hat 7.1 (afaik)
(this is based on a bt878 chipset)
Re:Wow, this is soo insightful. (Score:5, Funny)
Comedy gold...
Re:Wow, this is soo insightful. (Score:3, Funny)
Gimme a break. Windows XP/2000 is just as stable as Linux. Both have the same caveat: proper user configuration and maintainence.
Re:Wow, this is soo insightful. (Score:5, Insightful)
Last reinstall? Hah! How many have there been? Those two words say more than the rest of your message.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to go find out which
Let me know when you find a find a linux distribution that says editing
We'll be waiting....
Re:Wow, this is soo insightful. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don' see how... (Score:4, Interesting)
With Windows, you're locked down to MS' (pretty terrible) support.
Re:I don' see how... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don' see how... (Score:2, Insightful)
Say something happened to the Apache team. Whole team was on a bus tour of Utah, and got hit by a whale. It could happen. I'm still running Apache as my web server. You seriously think that I could bring in "hell, any programmer" to maintain it with the high level of detail and knowledge that the true Apache team had.
Fuck no.
Yes, with open source there are plenty of advantages, but don't pretend that simply because it's open source that it will be bug free, eternally supported,
Re:I don' see how... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don' see how... (Score:3, Informative)
No Choice... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft had no choice really. It was either extend their tech support, or watch many people turn to Linux when they next upgrade.
This just delays that, probably until longhorn where the choice between upgrading or Linux is to be made, in about 2 years.
It was time. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I like about current situation is that the appearance of solid competitors (around Linux) and the scrutinity of judiciary entities (namely EU), we might have a real free market again in the OS field. That would be great, no matter who the winner is. Free market is always better than a vorace monopoly, and I'd like to see real progress in the field, which can only occur in a competitive market.
I think the next few years will be very interesting, indeed. Imagine if we had as much offering in the OS field as in say the gaming field.
Re:It was time. (Score:2, Interesting)
inquiring minds want to know... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:inquiring minds want to know... (Score:3, Insightful)
10 years of support... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:10 years of support... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:10 years of support... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. As software improves it gets harder and harder to improve it. As software improves people see less and less reason to upgrade.
It's called "maturation," which, for some reason, most propriatary software makers never saw coming.
KFG
Re:10 years of support... (Score:2)
I think they did see it coming... which is why so many bugs still exist in their products (not to mention all the vaporware -- why release it until it is time to prod the market?). While they were prolonging the "upgrade cycle" open source and free software caught up to and in many ways surpassed the quality of their proprietary alternatives (not to say that open source and free software is bug-free of cou
Re:10 years of support... (Score:5, Insightful)
It all makes for a lot of crappy programing on all sorts of levels and there are certainly still all sorts of improvements to be made in all sorts of places.
But even given all that software is still maturing. A word processor is a word processor and MS word processors and their spawn hit their peak with 97. emacs and vi just keep working, and working, and working. .
No, I really think most of the propriatary companies really believed that by following their policy of only releasing upgrades in slow cycles well below the rate they were actually developing product they could extend the process for decades, relying on technology to outpace their own release cycle.
Yes, this has certainly played a role in letting OSS catch up and even pass their product in some cases.
I think some of the companies just didn't think about it at all. They were young and just got caught up in the whole fervor of the thing, ploughed ahead blindly and got surprised when software turned out to be just another technology business prey to all the laws of the real world.
Microsoft is a special case though. It's a company founded on a cult of personality more than anything else. I've never seen a company, except maybe early IBM, simply exude the personality of its founder more than Microsoft.
And Bill is one of these people who simply does not acknowledge other people as valid other people. He has a "right to innovate." He has a right to conduct business however he likes, because his like is what's right. We get to do what he says, when he says it because we don't share his rights.
So Microsoft simply thought they could make us upgrade forever without ever even considering that we might simply refuse. It wasn't in their world view that that was possible.
And OSS catching up and even surpassing their product in some cases (well, virtually all really. The best Windows programs don't come from Microsoft) is certainly playing a role in disquieting them. It rattles their whole view of cosmology.
Like the Protestant Reformation rattled the Pope.
OSS has its own problem with maturation though. It likes to press ever onward at increasing speed and yesterday's project becomes uninteresting.
Somebody has to do the last two percent of finishing up a project and tying a bow on it. In OSS this only seems to happen with the console programs.
KFG
Never Use (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an improvement, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a step in the right direction. But, I am not a big fan of that type of licensing. I ran into several applications that used this same logic. The problem is that we architect our services for automatic failover. So, the backup server must be available on the network at all times, and when the criteria for failover are met, it instantly takes over. It may even by synchronizing data in the background all the time.
Only one server is every active at any given time, but both need to be running. Some licenses allow for this. But, it's obviously much harder to enforce licensing limitations in this model. It almost has to be an honor system, unless the application is fully HA aware and can ensure only one is active at any time.
Re:It's an improvement, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Only one server is every active at any given time
No; you said yourself that the backup may be synchronising data, ready to takeover in the event of the primary failing. If that's the case then the machine *is* in use, it's just not serving data to clients.
That doesn't make this new licensing scheme bad, it just means that it's not appropriate for your use (or ours, as it happens, as we tend to set things up as you describe too)
10 years?! (Score:5, Funny)
MD: No way! We still have 3 years on our licensing with Microsoft, we can't just throw money away!
[in 3 years]
MD: Hey Microsoft have given us a new 40% discount for a 3,000 year licensing plan! We can't possibly move to Linux now!
Wow, a really long support life cycle... (Score:5, Informative)
In contrast, Linux's supposed #1 commercial distribution, Redhat? All official support was pulled after 16 months. I hope people can lobby to keep enterprise business away from Redhat.
Re:Wow, a really long support life cycle... (Score:4, Informative)
Nonetheless, their decision was a business one and a legitimate decision at that. Linux and Open Source in general have a development model of release early, release often. If a bug is spotted, it's generaly corrected by a new release, not a bug fix to an existing release.
If you don't like that model companies, RedHat included, are willing to backport patches to earlier releases. You can subscribe to such services for $$$.
Basically, Linux comes in two flavours, one for early adopters, happy to patch adn upgrade as necessary, the other is for those who want long term stability. The first one can be free as in beer, the second can too, but much more rarely. If you need the kind of support and stability offered by option two, you're probably willing to pay for it, and quite possibly willing to pay redhat for it.
Apples & Oranges (Score:3, Informative)
With any Linux distribution however, because of the modular structure, you are able to upgrade whatever is needed yourself - almost forever.
Of course the average Winlot will never acknowledge this fact...
I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly does that mean? How do you pull support of free software? What's keeping anyone from moving to Fedora or Debian? As another poster has mentioned, you can replace any part of any free system yourself anytime. Help is cheap and competent. Security seems like a non issue too.
Distributions like Debian make the version change as easy as apt-get upgrade. Fedora is moving in that direction, if it's not already there.
I've never suffered data loss due to changing software since changing over to Red Hat 5.1. The data grew from there through Red Hat 7 and then to Debian potato, woody and now sarge. I did this on two different computers, but it could just as easily have been one.
What kind of "support" did I need? Zero. How many support calls did I have make? None because I quickly learned that Google + LUG is a much faster way to get answers.
Before I knew what I was doing, I paid someone $50 to set something up for me. It was easy to find the help locally, even in 1998. If you live in a big enough town, you will have a magnet high school with a BSD or Linux lab and many cluefull people. University towns are crawling with CS students who also know what they are doing and need cash nights and weekends. When they graduate, they are worth their weight in M$ licenses and EULAs.
In the last six years, I've never had a security issue outside of Windows. This might be because I've continuously upgraded my software, but it still looks easier to protect old Linux boxes than Winblows. Even if I were so terribly lazy that I did not do security upgrades, I can still keep old machines from running dangerous services or make effective firewalls for them.
So, I don't understand the fuss. What trouble have you really had?
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)
First, an off-topic question to the moderators: How can self-professed ignorance ("I don't get it.") be insightful?
Next, a response to the parent.
When corporations talk about "official support," they're looking for a couple of things that F/OSS can't give them:
Number one is standard CYA; if you do your own software support, then it's clearly your fault when things aren't working. The fundamental rule of succeeding in Corporat
misinformation about Red Hat (Score:4, Informative)
And even with the non-commercial offerings... Well, Fedora Legacy is still providing updates for Red Hat Linux 7.3, and I'm confident there'll be no problems finding updates for Fedora Core 1 for at least another three years.
I agree that Red Hat did a shocking job of explaning what was happening when they changed their product line and started Fedora, though.
Danny.
No network - no update ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sasser & Co would eat you alive before you could even say "Hell, where's the Windows Update Button ?" or "Why is this crashing ? We installed the fix for the application 6 months ago!".
Hopefully MS will allow network connections for updates. It would probably be cheaper to have a license ready instead of burning the "Update DVDs Du Jour" just in case you need it.
Just my 5 €-Cents
Re:No network - no update ? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, um (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Microsoft isn't going to make people play for licenses of Windows that they aren't using
2. Microsoft isn't going to force upgrades anymore, at least not exactly.
Gee, how altruistic of them.
Let me guess (Score:2, Insightful)
"Microsoft Revamps Licensing Plans"
Such a headline always sounds like good news. Let me guess... This new Microsoft licensing plans will be good for customers, good for competition and especially good for free software including, but not limited to, GNU GPL, and there will be lots of positive feedback on Slashdot, am I right? Am I right? Please tell me I am! OK, I'll RTFA... Somehow I have a bad feeling, I don't know why... It must be that tin-foil hat and all that, I guess... *sigh*
DRP (Score:4, Insightful)
At the very least, this legitimizes the DRP testing that regulated industries (ie Pharmaaceutical) are required to carry out annually.
In many cases these are full blown restoration of service off the corporate network.
It happens now, but at least it will hapen in compliance with licensing agreements.
Gotta love market pressure (Score:5, Insightful)
All of this really makes me happy. If I am forced to use Microsoft products, then I have a decent shot at a better deal because of the FS/OSS products I make most use of today.
It hardly gets better than that. Thanks to everyone who has worked hard to get us this far. For everyone else, myself included, please consider contributing in some fashion. You can write docs, test, pass the word along, purchase some software and get a nice box, etc...
OSS: You get more than you contribute in return. How cool is that!
One question (Score:3, Interesting)
"Microsoft Revamps Licensing Plans"
Please tell me, "to revamp" is a verb from "revenge," isn't it? Why do I always have bad feelings when I read "Microsoft," "licensing," "competition" and "Linux" in the same sentence? I must be paranoid or something.
(By the way, wouldn't it make more sense if the link "as Reuters article suggests" actually pointed to the Reuters article [reuters.com] instead of the Yahoo link which suspiciously looks like pay-per-click partnership program URL?)
Same old practice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also I don't think linux pressure has anything to do with it. I'm just sick of their licensing practices period and I think that attitude is what is changing things. Who wants to pay extra money to have a server sitting around doing nothing? Not me. That being said I would rather use linux for core systems whenever possible.
Anyway I think alot of the posts so far are good especially the one pertaining to the updates on an offline server.
Place your bets...place your bets (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh oh, the Redmond Mind Trick! (Score:5, Interesting)
These are not the licensing changes you're looking for, move along.
baby steps (Score:3, Funny)
Well, it's a step in the right direction anyways.
Bob Wiley: Baby step to four o'clock. Baby step to four o'clock [imdb.com].
Good for disaster situations, but I'm sure a lot of people have already been using this "new" licensing scheme for a while now.
XP Concurrent sessions? (Score:3, Interesting)
makes you wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
2.) How will Microsoft know if its plugged into the network? As well as the fact that a server w/o updates or recent data (yeah, I'm sure you could use removeable storage for that, but there goes the TCO), will be pretty much worthless. If it takes 8 hours to get recent data on it, and install the past 6 months worth of updates, how useful is it really? In addition, I don't like the idea that a server may be "calling home" to confirm that it is not in use. Sounds like a setup to me.
3.) With the longer product life, is Microsoft realising that people actually don't want to upgrade their OS every 5 years, especially for mission critical devices?
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:3, Informative)
The activation "feature" of XP is the only security related thing M$ evr did that worked the way they wanted., and most of us consider it a bug.
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people on
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I lust after the newer Apple equipment.
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
You should remember just how Microsoft took over.
All of those practices appeal to managers ("it is easier to manage Windows servers and palmtops if you already manage Windows desktops"), developers ("write once, run anywhere") and users ("if you know how to use win95, you can use WinXP"). (As geeks we all know there is devil in the details but those statements are largely true in the big picture)
Linux on the desktop is becoming the threat because that means it becomes credible to have Linux everywhere (servers, palmtops) (ie the same reasons why Windows spread like a virus :-)
The Linux companies are slowly doing some of the same things, but at a far slower rate, and IMHO far more stupidly (ahem RedHat, take a bow). But Microsoft never makes the mistake of underestimating their competitors, and these actions are consistent with them learning what lead to their own success and ensuring the same doors won't be wide open for Linux.
But hardware will be free!!! (Score:4, Funny)
more old news (Score:4, Informative)
snicker (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think Microsoft thought about that. And I'm certain they think their servers will stay online to compete with Linux. On top of that, I'm not certain I understand how an offline server is competing with Linux.
There's a simple question here:
Are they stupid or do they think we're stupid enough to believe this?
Get your hip-waders out folks, it's getting deep very fast.
This is the advantage of competition (Score:5, Insightful)
And it seems to be working.
Are IT people co-dependent? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's funny. The last disaster recovery I was involved with kicked off with scrapping all of the hard drives. IIS, Exchange, and Windows 2000 Server were tossed and replaced with Apache and Sendmail on a couple of Mandrake boxes. Our network was lightning fast after that upgrade. It took a complete and utter failure of both the primary and secondary domain controllers for us to realise how stupid keeping the MS machine oiled is.
MS using MAC? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Since all those people who have software update contracts with MS have basically gotten squat from them in the way of software this may pacify those business who purchased the plans. Better yet it may cover the ass of the IT department who said purchasing those plans would pay for itself in the long run.
2. It provides a band-aid, even though it would not help that much, for the glut of worms and viri that have cost businesses money, data, lost employee hours and customers. More than likely if a system administrator was stupid enough to let his system get infected in the first place he would probably infect the backup server when he went to recover the files.
Even though both of these things would really help MS in the long run, at least in the PR department, they still have to add a bunch of stipulations to getting the software. I think Microsoft would be happier if they got the PR and the stipulations meant that only 1 or 2 people were eligible to get the free software. They also blew a really good chance of helping to dispel the truth that their OS is full of security holes by allowing those with pirated copies to download the "more secure" SP2, but they quickly jerked that back and gave about the lamest statement to come from a software company to the press about it. Who knows, it could be a smart move if SP2 is not as secure as MS has been claiming it is.....they can just blame the pirates or linux or both.
Microsoft is used to shooting itself in the foot but lately they seem to like emptying the whole clip into instead of just a single shot. It makes me wonder who is behind all this, Gates or Ballmer?
Good news for DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell did such licenses become so popular? Because there was no competition. Everyone was doing it so you had a choice. Use software with a restrictive license or don't use software. But we have alternatives now, so why does everyone still use software with restrictive licenses? Because the software became the standard (i.e. Microsoft).
People are shit-scared this will happen with DRM. But this article shows alternatives slowly starting to alter restrictive licenses. This is a Good Thing (TM) because if they can do it after such licenses have become the norm, they should be able to affect DRM and hurt it a lot.
That's nice (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Architectural Obsolescence? (Score:2)
Re:Architectural Obsolescence? (Score:5, Informative)
LDAP authentication support,
Built-in terminal services,
Plug-and-play,
USB,
User switching,
Compatibility modes,
System restore,
An eye-ruining GUI,
A dog that helps you find files.
Re:Architectural Obsolescence? (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing all versions of windows are missing is multiuser support. I'm sure I don't run my CPU at 100% throttle, yet nobody else can use my machine without one of us having to go for a coffee break.
Multi-User or Multi-Settings?
Re:Architectural Obsolescence? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow!
On the other hand, the multics operating system was doing better than that in 1965. Way to go Microsoft - only 40 years behind the cutting edge.
Re:As usual. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GNU/Linux competition is real (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, I find it interesting that Windows has a way lower "Total Cost of Ownershop" than Linux, but still they lower their prices to try to compete with Linux. That doesn't make their TCO campaigns very credible, does it?