Microsoft Licensing

[Beacon]

Hi all,

Does anyone else know of changes in the Microsoft Licensing agreements where you have to update every 2 years or something.

Or any upcoming changes in the licensing system?

I recieved some mail from a MCP saying that there were going to be changes.
I just thew it in the bin as bollocks though now someone else started talking about it i was wandering if it was true.

b

[Pc_Madness]

Changes? Umm didn't they want everyone to subcribe to their software, instead of buying it at the store? Every thing would be done of the net.

This true?

[Beacon]

Yep and you have to re-sunbscribe every 2 years i heard.

So if you dont upgrade now it costs more or something.

later
b

[Michael_Kamen]

They wanted to do that, yes. But I've haven't heard they pushed it through. There was a lot of resistance against this new system.

[JoshT]

The licenses I'm using at work aren't really a subscription - for the two year course of the license, I'm entitled to free OS path upgrades, and at the end of the two years, I'm left with a license to whatever upgrade was current at the expiration. So right now, we're all Windows 2000 Pro. We can upgrade to Windows Xp Pro when ever we want. After two years, we'll still have valid licences for XP Pro, but will have to pay more money if we want future upgrades.

Anyway, what bugs me is that you buy, for example, 30 licences at, for example, $200 each. So you spent $6000, and all you get out of it is an email saying you own 30 licenses and a web site you have to register with to get your product key. I had to pay an extra $20-30 to get 2000 or XP install CDs shipped to me.

[Jethro]

Originally posted by Beacon
Hi all,

Does anyone else know of changes in the Microsoft Licensing agreements where you have to update every 2 years or something.

Or any upcoming changes in the licensing system?

I recieved some mail from a MCP saying that there were going to be changes.
I just thew it in the bin as bollocks though now someone else started talking about it i was wandering if it was true.

b

Yeah we got that too. MS are trying to conn everyone into paying annual licenses rather than *cough*full purchase price*cough* up front. Is a more expense option and quite frankly sucks...

We just do the MSDN thing....

[BG]

ahh, So Microsoft is going over to IBM style. Just Great

[Beacon]

Originally posted by Jethro

We just do the MSDN thing....

Whats that??

[MidgetsBro]

With MSDN you have a subscription, and you pay that annually or something like that and get all the upgrades and other microsoft products shipped to you for nothing because you are paying the subscription. I think that is what he is talking about... not 100% sure.

[SoCalled]

Originally posted by MidgetsBro
With MSDN you have a subscription, and you pay that annually or something like that and get all the upgrades and other microsoft products shipped to you for nothing because you are paying the subscription. I think that is what he is talking about... not 100% sure.

That's the one... Microsoft Developer Network. Each month you get CDs/DVDs full of the latest MS stuff which is kind of cool... we just got ce.net this month but haven't looked at it yet.