Linked by David Adams on Fri 18th Apr 2008 15:54 UTC, submitted by CIozzio
A Microsoft executive sent out a snotty email chastising anyone who has been encouraging people to purchase the Vista upgrade and install it without owning a valid Windows license. People discovered long ago that the Vista upgrade, which costs half of what full license costs, will install on new hardware without verification of a previous install. Microsoft's Eric Ligman points out, to those people who weren't aware, that this is just as much a violation of the license as "borrowing" an install disk from a friend.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Basically what you are saying is that if it's technically possible to 'break' a the licensing scheme then it is OK to do so? That seems a pretty disingenuous stance.
I have to very much disagree with that sentiment. That is sort of attitude that has led to the anti-piracy arms race we now are in. Without going into a discussion about the 'evils' of closed source software, I really despise companies who insist on making it has hard as possible to install the software I legally bought or licensed. I wish more companies would drop as much of their anti-piracy checks as possible and simply trust their customer base.
Of course with that comes a certain responsibility to respect the license for what you use. People shouldn't think it's OK use software they don't have a license for just because they technically can. I think we should applaud Microsoft in this case for not making life more difficult for their legitimate upgrade customers. There are a lot of things Microsoft does wrong in my book when it comes to product registration and Genuine Advantage and all that crap, let's not jump on them for the one thing they did right.