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Wednesday,
September 27, 2000 I am scheduled to catch an airplane
tomorrow morning at 0700 to be in St Louis for a convention, but I do not
think I will get there. I seem to have caught the Fall Crud, which isn't
serious, merely leaves you filleted. And Roberta is concerned that on an
airplane I'd get something worse. So I may be here all weekend.
I spoke to Microsoft, and the Register is wrong: no one can figure out
where there are any billions at stake on the licensing policies. Microsoft
has now extended to the Enterprise customers the same policies they had in
place for their largest customers. This means that if you have an
Enterprise site, you buy a machine with Windows on it, and decide to
replace that with a copy identical to what is running on your other
machines on site, you go ahead and do it, and you don't have to pay a
second license fee. This is what everyone did for a long time, then there
was a policy change, everyone complained, and Microsoft changed again.
Microsoft puts the best face on this they can, and I don't need to inquire
into motives. The policy has been changed.
They have not decided what to do about licensing for individual
customers which includes small businesses that typically do not have a
site license to begin with. Suppose you are an architect's office with 20
screens, some with 98, some with 2000 Server, two with 2000 professional,
and off in the corner a Window 95 system, plus a couple of SGI
workstations and a Mac or two. Many do CAD. You never bought an Enterprise
license. You buy a new machine with Windows installed on it. It will have
ME now. Do you continue the mix, do you try to get everything standard, if
you do what do you buy and what licenses do you want? Whatever it
is, there are not billions at stake here, and there are some issues of
fairness.
We all know what most do. Most will simply upgrade their older machines
with something new. They may or may not buy a separate copy for each one
they upgrade. They should, but many don't. This is the real world, and
enforcements and policies and such like get sticky at this level. This
blends into the whole intellectual property issue, and I am not at all
certain what is the best policy, either for official policy or enforcement
policy. (Those can differ, as for instance with 'abandonware' which a
company isn't going to formally release to public domain but isn't
looking for pirates and unless it's put in their faces will not see
pirates.) Things will sort out I am sure.
See http://microsoft.com/enterprise/licensing/docs/re-imaging_brief.htm
The Supreme Court has sent the Microsoft case to the Circuit Court for
DC. This Court has generally ruled for Microsoft in the past, and is a lot
more sophisticated about computers than Penfield Jackson who didn't know
if he used Windows or a Mac, but was willing to rule on a highly complex
issue. The result is a long delay before anything is done. Joel Klein may
be working for Microsoft before this is actually settled. Stranger things
have happened. In any event the issue will be very near moot before the
Circuit Court rules, and after that the appeal will be to the Supreme
Court. The only inevitable result of all this will be the transfer of a
lot of money from product development to lawyers, and a lot o tax money
paid to lawyers; and if you and I benefit after the lawyers have taken
their just rewards I will be much surprised.
This world of computers changes and when this case is finally settled
no one will remember what it was about.
PLEASE DO NOT NOT NOT send me links in format (www.jerrypournelle.com)
since in order to turn than into a link I must go to a lot of work. (
www.jerrypournelle.com) is better because I don't have to supply the
initial space before the ( or < or [ or { in order to get that
converted to a link. Best is not to put delimiters around it at all.
Please.
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