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More Vista licensing ugliness
Suprises Inside Microsoft Vista's EULA! Oh, sorry, that was supposed to be a sad frowny face, not an exclamation point. These are not surprises like the ones you find at the bottom of your Froot Loops. They're like the ones you find in, well, Microsoft licenses. The SecurityFocus article by Scott Granneman says that while Microsoft has tried to spit-polish Vista's license terms in recent weeks, they're still pretty draconian. Here are some of the delightful nuggets you can find: Benchmark gag order: You can only perform benchmarks on Vista, but only when you comply with Microsoft's conditions, which can change at any time. Virtualization limits: You can't run Vista Home Basic or Home Premium in a virtual machine, and if you use Vista Business or Ultimate in a virtual machine, you're not allowed to access any Microsoft DRM-protected content, including music and documents. Transfer to to other systems: You can transfer your Vista license to a second machine (provided you take it off the first machine), but after that you're done. No second transfer. Game over. Okay, so not all of this is news. We've talked about some of this before. But all of it sucks. As I've said before, your average user isn't going to read the EULA, much less care overmuch about its clauses on virtualization and benchmarking. But people who make purchasing decisions and give advice--those users' techie friends, IT managers, and so forth--aren't blind to these things. Is Microsoft slowly killing itself by making its EULAs increasingly consumer-surly? Will the power-users eventually bail, and take their layman friends and family with them?
Update: It seems like maybe both I and Granneman are behind the times. Several users have pointed out that Microsoft has backtracked on the limitations on transferring a Vista license to a new machine after outcry from pretty much everybody.
Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsDNov 3rd 2006 10:54AM
I thought they just fixed the transfer limit. It's unlimited transfers as long as it's only one install on one machine at one time, which makes sense.
Peter KirnNov 3rd 2006 11:38AM
Yes, by popular demand the transfer limit has been fixed, so please correct that! That for me was the one significant issue that would actually impact how you work. Now that you can move from one machine to another, it's really a non-starter; the other "one machine at a time" restrictions are pretty standard.
The only other issue I see here is with the DRM, because it means Intel Mac users can't run Windows Media Player subscription services in Parallels, which I expect someone thought of. Guess we'll have to settle for non-DRMed music from Pandora, last.fm, Songbird, Shoutcast radio, and whatever we sync to our countless audio-playing devices. Okay, so not really that bad.
FabuloNov 3rd 2006 7:05PM
re: transfer to other machine, let me remind everyone this only applies to a retail bought copy of Vista. If your operating system came pre-installed with Vista, you own an OEM license, and that license is stuck to the hardware you bought. NO TRANSFER AT ALL.
And for the EULA, again, the retail box is full covered of sticker that break when you open them, at several points (the box, the cd case, the paper cd wrapping. And they all say that installing the software requires acceptance of the terms of the licensing agreement. It does not matter if you read it or not (I recomment you do read it) but it is binding.
You never bought software, you always bought a license to use the software. The owner of that copy of windows I'm running right now is Microsoft.
I think of it as a pretty strong case for using software that is not owned by a corporation that can force crap down my throat.