Star Ballmer: Licensing Problematic, But Don't Expect Any Changes
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 5th Oct 2009 17:50 UTC
Microsoft Software licensing. As home users, it's already an incomprehensible mess of legalese that nobody cares one bit about. However - we home users have it easy. The situation for business users and people managing IT departments is even worse (proprietary software, mostly, of course). Microsoft is a major culprit in this regard, and while the company acknowledges that the situation is messy, they claim they can't really do anything about it.
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RE: cant break the piggy bank
by mabhatter on Tue 6th Oct 2009 04:51 UTC in reply to "cant break the piggy bank"
mabhatter
Member since:
2005-07-17

They don't want to do anything about it. They like the way it works, because it makes them a lot of money. People might be more money conscious if they understood everything Microsoft charges for. Plus, lumped together, the fees look like a lot compared to splitting them up.


Exactly, Licensing is fairly simple for home users and students... buy a PC with Windows and buy Student Office. They offer upgrades at a set cost per PC. Buy enough and you're legal.

For companies that have more computers and more money the cost is "what the market will bear". The game is that "full retail price" that's god-awful expensive is the stick to the various complex "carrots" Microsoft offers such as multi-year schemes, upgrade insurance, and bulk licensing. Nobody pays the "shelf price" of MS software, but by keeping the "shelf price" of the products high it allows Microsoft to offer you an "offer you can't refuse" or pay vastly more for software than your competition.

That is what makes investors happy, big profits.... of course explaining how they have 80%+ margins on Windows and Office divisions but take BILLIONS in losses on things like Xbox, Zune, Bing, etc. has got to make investors wonder why that money isn't in THEIR pockets during a recession.

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